The rebirth of Eurasianism
Among the revivals from pre-communist times in Russian thought today is the re-emergence of the so-called Eurasianism.
In the 19th century, Eurasianism attempted to overcome the rift in Russian intelligentsia between pro-reform Westernizers and pro-tsarist Slavophiles.
Russia’s role, Eurasianists argued, was not to imitate Western liberalism and democracy, or to reject it out of hand. Russia’s unique role was to gather from Eurasia’s rich diversity a third way, consistent with the culture and traditions of Orthodoxy and Russia but incorporating the best from East and West.
The new Eurasianism
The new post-Soviet Eurasianism, however, fits Western Russophobes’ stereotypes concerning Russian "zapadnophobia." Publicist and philosopher Alexander Panarin’s History’s Revenge represents the most eloquent and sophisticated face of this brand of contemporary Russian Eurasianism.
Panarin reflects not just the traits characterized in the stereotype of Russia’s "geostrategic culture," but also incorporates strains of Russia’s political culture: anti-Westernism, messianism, prometheanism, and anti-rationalism.
Neo-Eurasianist anti-Westernism is almost wholly anti-American, as seen in much of the post-modern left’s critique of globalization. America, in this view, is both subjectively, or self-servingly, and objectively the purveyor of destructive globalization, leading the world down the road of unsustainable development, the destruction of national cultures and non-Western civilizations, and ultimately the death of mankind.
One strategy is to divide the West by slicing off Europe from the U.S.-led Atlantic juggernaut, using the points of leverage of the romantic and resurgent Germans of Central Europe and perhaps the fraternal Slavs of Eastern Europe. The other is to rally the forces of the East against the Atlantic consensus.
Messianism is represented by Panarin’s notion that under the encroachment of American power and the press of globalization Eurasia’s stability and global survival are impossible without Russia.
It is uniquely poised to organize an alternative to the techno-economic globalization threatening the global ecology. Since Russia’s Orthodox civilization is the only one with affinity to the Buddhist, Confucian, and Islamic civilizations, only it can gather them together to counter the expansion of environmental and cultural pollution and poverty to countries left behind in globalization.
At the same time, Russia’s European and Slavic characteristics make it the logical bridge to a more spiritual and sustainable form of global development, to be offered to Europe as an alternative to the coming American-induced global holocaust. Russia can be both the reformer of the West and the modernizer of the East.
In short, as the influential Russian thinkers from Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Vladimir Solovyov believed, Russia is soon to save the world.
Russia, despite its present economic condition, can leap over the advanced stage of industrial development. Panarin insists Russia will lead the world into a new post-industrial, eco-cultural and multi-cultural world that rejects the consumerism and homogeneity of the "soul-less" American world view.
Anti-rationalism has been heavily amended from its traditional Orthodox predecessor, now shorn of superstition and founded on national self-pride and faith.
Rejecting the West’s reliance on market economics and social and physical sciences, it relies on a new spirituality, which communes with nature and God as the antithesis to globalization.
Ideology and politics
Eurasianism is producing several political organizations, many of which are more inclusive than the movement’s anti-Western and Russian patriotic elements might be willing to embrace. There are several ideological trends that seem to be contributing to this more tolerant strain.
Many Tatar intellectuals argue the origins of the Russian nation and state are nearly as much Tatar as they are Russian. They invoke the Tatar-Mongol ‘yoke’ and partial Tatarization of Russian society and state before Ivan Grozny’s liberation of Russia and the capture of the Kazan Khanate in 1522.
The special status won for Tatarstan by President Mintimer Shaimiyev – amounting to a confederal relationship – institutionalized the Tatars’ sense of their role in Russian history.
Such a policy is supported by those, including Shaimiyev and his top aide Rafael Khakimov, seeking to consolidate a delicate balance within the republic between Tatars and Russians and between Muslims and Orthodox.
This policy of inclusion coincides with some Eurasianists’ contention that Russia’s stability and potential as a great power can and should be achieved by bringing Eurasia’s ethnicities and civilizations closer together as a counter to globalization.
A similar trend is reflected in the membership of the new Eurasian Party. Headed by the anti-Western and Russian patriotic political scientist Alexander Dugin, it has been joined by the supreme mufti of Russia and the European countries of the C.I.S., and the chairman of the central Muslim religious board, Talgat Tadjuddin. The board’s entire leadership and an overwhelming majority of its members joined the Eurasia Party.
One thing that Panarin, Dugin, and Russia’s Muslims have in common is a suspicion of, if not disdain for, the West and globalization. Eurasianism and its related political organizations are manifestations of Thomas Freedman’s olive tree.
Realistic for today?
Clearly, contemporary Eurasianism is a unique, exotic, even ethereal blend of ideologies, philosophies and anti-Western strains from Russia’s political and strategic cultures.
However, there is some evidence that under Putin realities are fusing with Russian ideas to produce a more practical, economic form of Eurasianism.
This can be seen in Russia’s energy and transportation development policies, including extending Russia energy exports and pipelines to the east –including China – to the south, and to the West, and the policy of developing north-south and east-west transport networks.
There are also efforts to integrate Central Asian, Caucasian, and Eastern European states into a Eurasian Economic Union and a Eurasian Energy Community. The strategy seems aimed at making Russia the energy, transport and, ultimately, economic hub of Eurasia.
It remains to be seen whether the more politically inclusive and practical, economic-oriented visions of Eurasia will prevail over the more exclusive and fearful historical philosophy. Russia’s success in finding a constructive place in Eurasia and the world hinges on this cultural breakthrough.
Dr. Gordon M. Hahn is The Russia Journal’s political analyst and a visiting research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
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