Is Putin Pursuing a Policy of Eurasianism?

Demokratizatsiya, Winter 2005 by Schmidt, Matthew

Abstract:

In this article, the author outlines the history of Eurasianist thinking from its roots in Peter the Great's court to the contemporary version espoused by Alexandr Dugin and others. The article argues that Russian policy is dualistic, having been effectively separated into two distinct arenas: the economic and the political-philosophical. Although Putin uses the pseudo-philosophical rhetoric of the Eurasianists, the author argues that the policy prescriptions of Dugin's movement are not likely to be implemented by the current government.

Key words: Alexandr Dugin, Eurasianist thinking, Peter the Great, Vladimir Putin

But what do they want to find? Confirmation of the fact that we are not like others? Or moral compensation for material and other adversities? Or justification of hopelessness? Or an ideological cover for selfish interest?

. . . Or a new Utopia [based] on some mysterious instructions allegedly bequeathed to us by our ancestors?

Alexander Pumpiansky on the new Eurasianism (2003)1

I think that if we have come after others, it is in order to do better than the others. . . . I have the inner conviction that we are called upon to resolve most of the problems in the social order, to accomplish most of the ideas which arose in the old societies, to make a pronouncement about those very grave questions which occupy humanity.

Pyotr Chaadacv on the Eurasian movement of his day (1829)2

As the two epigraphs illustrate, it is impossible to discuss the contemporary debate over Russia's place in the world as a Eurasian3 or European nation without delving into the rich history surrounding the question itself-a question framed by Tim McDaniels as the "Agony of the Russian Idea" (emphasis added)-which has been at the center of Russian intellectual debates for centuries.4 The underlying question is one of identity. Where does Russia belong in the pantheon of nations? What does it see itself offering the world of today and the world of tomorrow, or as Dmitri Trenin has asked: What is Russia? and Who is Russian?5

Although such questions may seem indulgently ephemeral and foggy, even plainly ridiculous to readers steeped in the rational choice, economics-driven model of foreign policy dominant in the West, this question of identity is the pivot point around which today's Russian foreign policy turns. Is Russia to fully become part of the secular, material, postmodern West represented by the countries of the Euro-Atlantic world, or will it move closer to the vision of a uniquely Eurasian model that is more spiritual, more ambivalent towards the supposed benefits of modernity, and thus less integrated into the globalized trade, cultural, and political networks that define modernity?

History of the Eurasian Idea

Only the deepest of skeptics debate the real power of these ideas to affect political action. The rest understand that however cynical the process of politics the world over is, not all rhetoric is empty. This is especially true in Russia, where the streets are lined with statues of the poets and writers whose words inspired legions of revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries. The debate over Russian identity has been at the core of Russian foreign policy for centuries. The question of Russia's identity drove Peter the Great's (1672-1725) westernizing policies as surely as it drives President Putin today. It is the incredible continuity of this debate that is perhaps the most defining element in Russian foreign policy.

Trenin encapsulates the contours of this debate as twofold: spatial and politicalphilosophical. What exactly is Eurasia? Is it a place or an idea? The idea of a distinct Eurasian geography is more or less taken for granted today. Numerous political groups, academic institutions, and journals adorn themselves with some form of "Eurasia" in their title. But like all such definitions, deciding what constitutes Eurasia and where it is located was the product of an extended and unconcluded argument. It was a constructed idea that required a complex structure of arguments to support its assertions, and only after centuries of refinement and promulgation did it come to be considered fact.

The foundations for the idea of a specifically Eurasian cultural space have deep roots in Russian intellectual history. Born out of the necessity to incorporate the territory won during his war with Charles XII of Sweden, Peter the Great decided to have a new geographic outline written that would include the newly won territory, moving Russia's place on European maps of the day from the Asian continent into Europe.6 By redrawing the eastern boundary of Europe to include Russia, Peter could strengthen the position of his empire in the minds of the established European monarchs while adding historical justification for his internal policy of Europeanization; but any attempt to redefine Russia's political identity required that its basic geographic identity be changed first.

Peter's court geographer, Vasiliy Tatishchev (1686-1750), proposed that the Ural mountains, what he called the veliky poias-or great belt-be considered the defining "natural configuration" along which to delineate the two continents of Europe and Asia.