An armed conflict, for which political Europe is increasingly preparing, can probably still be avoided. But the new division of the European continent is likely to harden and remain a reality for generations to come. Political Europe will seek to draw into its orbit—if not into its formal structures—the parts of the continent that lie outside Russia, including such ambiguously European regions as the South Caucasus. It will not tolerate alternative integration projects. That means an irreconcilable struggle with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), already playing out in Armenia and likely to extend to Belarus.
Meanwhile, a profound mental shift is underway inside Russia. The current distancing from the western part of the continent followed a period of rapprochement that lasted through the first two decades after the end of the Cold War. From that period, Moscow drew two main lessons. First, that it cannot join political Europe in principle. Second, that political Europe is incapable of negotiating shared principles for coexistence on the continent: it speaks the language of domination, sincerely convinced that its own path has no alternative. The result is that today’s Russia, for the first time in several centuries, is ceasing to see itself as part of a specifically European system.
In the imperial era, this status meant competitiveness and a seat at the table not only in European, but also in global affairs. Russian Marxism—deeply Eurocentric by nature—set out to put Russia in the vanguard of world progress. In its early, revolutionary phase, Soviet Russia considered itself the leader of progressive forces in Europe, the most progressive part of the world. In its later, more stable phase, it saw itself in a more traditional role as a guarantor of the European order and a guardian of European civilization. Post-Soviet Russia looked to political Europe as a natural partner for its national development.
Closed borders, severed trade and economic links, and the attempts to “cancel” Russian culture (not especially successful)—all of this is part of a larger message from political Europe: the time for ideas like “from the Atlantic to the Urals” or “from Lisbon to Vladivostok” is over. There is no longer any demand for dialogue or cooperation between the two halves of the European continent. But Russia, perhaps for the first time, is realizing that it can live without political Europe—which it no longer sees as a benchmark and bulwark of progress, but merely as one form of political life in Eurasia.
This is the second factor—alongside the unprecedented cohesion of political Europe—that makes the present situation unique. The emergence of new centres of power across Eurasia with growing political, economic, and military weight means that the old coordinate system is becoming obsolete. The debates about Russia’s belonging to Europe, so central to Russian thought for centuries, are losing their meaning when Europe itself now sees itself not as a civilization but as a hermetic system with a unique and non-exportable set of characteristics.
But what has traditionally been called European civilization is another matter. The element of its identity that Russia regards as European, it can cultivate on its own, without looking over its shoulder at the western half of the continent. And it will. To quote Yuri Slezkine, “It is easier for Russia to say that it is defending Europe from itself than to say that it is no longer Europe.”
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
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