EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Russia in Search of New Paradigm: Eurasianism Revisited

EURASIA INSIGHT

RUSSIA IN SEARCH OF NEW PARADIGM: EURASIANISM REVISITED

Igor Torbakov 3/24/00

There is a growing understanding in present-day Russia that the upcoming presidential elections will not only ratify a change of the guard � an act of routine political succession from the old leader to the new one � but also mark a clear watershed dividing the different historical epochs. In their search for an ideological framework for the future, many in Russia are looking to the past.

A large number of political observers in Moscow now view the Yeltsin epoch as a botched capitalist revolution � a missed opportunity that failed to create a stable and prosperous Russia. Indeed, some analysts have expressed concern about potential damage done to Russian statehood. The philosopher Leonid Ionin, writing recently in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, suggested the chief aspect of Yeltsin’s legacy might turn out to be "disillusionment in democracy, in freedom, in civilization, in partners, in those who seemed to be friends."

Thus, the chief challenge facing Russia seems to be quickly redefining the country’s development priorities. Many feel that, in searching for this identity, Russia ought to look to its own indigenous historical tradition as it shapes its peculiar political culture and state institutions.

These ideological motifs can be easily discerned, for instance, in the programmatic article Vladimir Putin posted on Russian government web site one day before he was officially named Boris Yeltsin’s heir. [Click here for the Russian government’s official website] Over the last three months, the idea that the new regime’s political philosophy will be rooted firmly in tradition has come to be regarded as axiomatic by Russia’s elite.

At a March 24 meeting of the Security Council, Putin reiterated the need to move urgently to realign Russia’s foreign policy priorities. ""We should have a clear understanding of what guides our foreign policy in this changing world," the Interfax news agency quoted Putin as saying at the meeting. The state should "be more attentive, balanced and persistent in defending the interests of both its compatriots living in Russia and of those who chose CIS countries � as their place of permanent residence."

Interestingly, a lot of self-styled political gurus specializing in the so called new "Russian idea" draw heavily -- wittingly or unwittingly -- upon the intellectual legacy of Eurasianism � the school of thought that emerged in the 1920s among the Russian "White Guard" emigres in Europe. The main thrust of the Eurasians’ teaching was that Russia constituted a separate geopolitical and geocultural entity, in fact, the whole continent � Eurasia � with its own peculiar historical path, markedly different from other European and Asian nations.

True, the Eurasians borrowed freely from the works of Slavophiles and such nineteenth-century Russian thinkers as Nikolai Danilevsky, Fedor Dostoyevsky, Konstantin Leontyev and Vladimir Lamansky. However, the personal catastrophic experience of the Eurasian movement’s founding fathers during the years of Revolution and Civil War informed a special sharpness to their arguments and deepened their historical intuitions.

It is these similar catastrophic experiences � the upheavals of 1917-1921 in the case of the Eurasians, and Russia’s most recent "time of troubles" in the case of the present-day ideologues � that brings the ardently patriotic and statist-minded émigré-intellectuals and the post-Yeltsin political scientists closer together.

Both Eurasians and contemporary Russian analysts have been especially preoccupied with the working out of the new paradigm of Russian historical development which would break the "vicious circle" of trying to catch up with the West. Even Mr. Putin in his tract "Russia at the Turn of the Millennium" paid only lip-service to "pan-human values," but dwelt at length on "the primordial, traditional values of the Russian people" such as "patriotism, great-power spirit and statism." He simply dismissed the idea that Russia might ever become a "second edition" of the United States or Great Britain.

This intellectual stance seems to echo the thoughts expressed in Prince Nikolai S. Trubetskoi’s classic "Europe and Mankind" which came out in Sofia in 1920. "Let us emphasize," asserted one of the leading Eurasians, "Unbroken tradition is a prerequisite for normal evolution. Leaps and jumps create temporary illusion that the �common European level of civilization’ has been achieved, but they cannot advance a nation in a true sense of the word."

In the recently released "An Economist’s Reflections in Anticipation of the Change of the Political Regime," the well-known Moscow analyst Vitaly Naishul argues that the challenges that Russia is currently facing necessitates a search for "the new archetypes," based on values and notions deeply rooted in the national psyche. Such a new archetype is needed, Naishul argues, to improve the political leadership’s ability to communicate with, and mobilize the masses.

In Naishul’s opinion, functional archetypes can only be found in the past. He goes on to state, however, that answers lie not in the lessons of "St. Petersburg Imperial Russia," but farther back, in "pre-Petrine Muscovite Russia."

"The system of positive archetypes of the pre-Petrine epoch was later called the Holy Rus," writes Naishul. These ancient values should be re-interpreted and transplanted into a modern context. Then "it is not at all impossible that we will [again] be able to live in the efficient state in the Holy Rus."

At first glance this suggestion might seem too extravagant and unconventional. It will be worthwhile to note, however, that in the Eurasian periodical Evraziiskii vremennik (1923) one can encounter the following passage: "Innovation consists in the rejection of the immediate, recent past, not the past in general; the near past is discarded while remote epochs are used as an ideological model."

Symptomatically, though, the current intellectual borrowing from the Eurasian legacy is rather selective. One cannot fail to notice that the builders of the new regime’s ideological foundations appear to completely ignore Eurasians’ treatment of the so-called nationality question, specifically in the way Russia interacts with other former Soviet republics.

Judging by the Kremlin’s ruthless prosecution of the war in Chechnya, this selectivity is not at all fortuitous. In his time, Prince Trubetskoi, who, incidentally, was the world-renowned authority in comparative Caucasian philology, sharply criticized Czarist imperial policy in the Caucasus, especially the brutal subjugation of the mountainous peoples. In a letter to his close friend, and the leader of the Eurasian circle in Prague, Petr Savitsky, Trubetskoi derided this policy as "colonial," adding; "I believe that for Eurasians the tendency to idealize Russian great-power spirit and Russian nationalism is especially dangerous, and it should be suppressed by all means."

Editor�s Note: Igor Torbakov is a freelance journalist who specializes in CIS political affairs. He holds a MA in History from the Moscow University and PhD from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences; Regional Exchange Scholar at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC, 1995; Research Scholar at the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1988-1997; Kiev correpsondent for the Paris-based Russkaya mysl weekly, 1998-2000; currently a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University.

The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website, meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed debate about the social, political and economic developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is a program of the Open Society Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation that promotes the development of open societies around the world by supporting educational, social, and legal reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex and controversial issues.

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