BETWEEN

OPE
&
The Origins, Theories, and
Legacies of Russian Eurasianism

Edited by
Mark Bassin, Sergey Glebov,
& Marlene Laruelle

University of Pittsburgh Press

 
 Postface

THE PARADOXICAL LEGACY OF EURASIANISM

IN CONTEMPORARY EURASIA

Marlene Laruelle

READERS of this work will perhaps note above all Eurasianism’s unsus-
pected diversity, a diversity that plays out in terms of intellectual lineages,
scholarly orientations, and disciplinary methods, but also in terms of the in-
dividual trajectories of its main figures. This feeling is heightened upon en-
countering the multifaceted nature of the Eurasianist motif in the post-Soviet
space and Eurasianism’s paradoxical legacy in contemporary Russia.

Plural Neo-Eurasianisms

Are we, today, to speak of Eurasianism, or rather to define a specific cat-

egory, that of neo-Eurasianism? Should we use the latter in the singular,
neo-Eurasianism, or in the plural, neo-Eurasianisms? To respect intellectual
lineages and historical contexts, here I define Eurasianism as the interwar
movement, and speak about neo-Eurasianisms to describe the current move-
ments that refer, one way or another, to this idea of Eurasia.
Eurasianism and neo-Eurasianisms have a complex relationship, and the
impression at first glance of a direct continuity from the emigration to the
post-Soviet period is debatable. Today’s neo-Eurasianists have an ambivalent
attitude toward the founding fathers. Lev Gumilev in his time, then more re-
cently the Moscow State University philosophy professor Aleksandr Panarin

187

 
(1940–2003), and the fascist geopolitician Aleksandr Dugin (1962), as well as
theorists of Turkic or Kazakhstani Eurasianism, often speak harshly of the
original Eurasianists. Very few of them see themselves as disciples of the old
masters, who they more often consider, at best, to have only partially antici-
pated their own, much more accomplished ideas.
Conceptual differences between Eurasianism and neo-Eurasianisms are
also important. First of all, Russian neo-Eurasianism does not share the ex-
altation of the East so prominent among the original Eurasianists, who were
strongly marked by Romantic Orientalism. Nor does it express any partic-
ular sympathy for the cultures of Central Asia and Mongolia. Non-Russian
neo-Eurasianists alone valorize their own cultures, branding them in a fash-
ion similar to original Eurasianism by exalting both local ethnicities and
their “symbiosis” with Russian culture. Neo-Eurasianism’s views on history
and geography are also less sophisticated than those of the founding fathers.
No neo-Eurasianists have taken up Petr Savitskii’s idea that the “rhythms of
Russian history” govern the dialectic between forest and steppe. There have
been no followers of his thinking about Russia’s spatiality as the primordial
justification of Eurasian unity, nor of his interest in the idea of a geographi-
cal symmetry of empire and a geometrical rationality of Eurasian space. Neo-
Eurasianisms have also radicalized the paradoxical determinism of interwar
Eurasianism, upsetting the balance that the founding fathers had struck be-
tween fatalism and liberty, between divine will and human choice.
Neo-Eurasianisms are diverse in space. The implosion of the Soviet Union
also imploded narratives on the theme of Eurasia. They are to be found in
present-day Russia but also in some of the other post-Soviet republics, in par-
ticular Kazakhstan, where it functions as an official doctrine for a state that
presents itself as an encounter between East and West, Europe and Asia, Rus-
sia and the East, which places Kazakhs on a pedestal as the brilliant legacy
of its location at the crossroads of worlds. Using the model of a matrioshka
(Russian nesting doll), which served so well to describe the federal character
of Russia, many neo-Eurasianisms are also present in the Russian space: in
autonomous republics, some political figures and scholarly groups elaborate
their own local versions of neo-Eurasianism. They inflect it with local topics
and wield it as a tool that allows for claims of localism and of loyalty to the
Russian state. Tatarstan has been at the forefront of this trend, followed by
Yakutia-Sakha, and multiple local variations are taking shape in Bashkorto-
stan, Buryatia, Tuva, Kalmykia, and so on.
Neo-Eurasianisms are also temporally diverse insofar as their narratives
have evolved over the past two decades. At the start of the 1990s they were
used primarily to compensate for the Soviet collapse because they offered a
way of thinking about the suddenly fragmented post-Soviet space as a unity

188 Marlene Laruelle

 
without using the reference to Communism. In the 2000s, the Kremlin’s re-
habilitation of the Soviet past as the key common dominator of Russian soci-
ety, together with nostalgia for late-Soviet decades and its cultural classics,
detracted from the specificity of neo-Eurasianisms. They made their return,
however, with the emergence of the Eurasian Union project—an old scheme
flagged by Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev in 1994, but up-
dated to fit current tastes by Vladimir Putin in 2011. The establishing of the
Russia–Belarus–Kazakhstan Customs Union, the first functional organiza-
tion promoting post-Soviet reintegration, and the launching of the Eurasian
Economic Union in January 2015, push neo-Eurasianist narratives to take on
a more pragmatic color.
Neo-Eurasianisms are also diverse in terms of the figures that embody
them. Lev Gumilev, who died in 1992, continues to enjoy unique posthumous
prestige in Russia as well as in republics such as Kazakhstan. There, the
national university of the new capital city, Astana, was named after him, but
was somewhat overshadowed by the creation of the new university organized
on the Anglo-Saxon model of a globalized campus, this time named after Pres-
ident Nazarbayev. Aleksandr Panarin, deceased in 2003, developed a form of
neo-Eurasianism that is probably closest to that of the founding fathers in
terms of its identity themes, its notion of Russia’s relation to Europe and to
Asia, and the religious philosophy underlying its geopolitical vision of Russia.
However, the neo-Eurasianism field is dominated by one figure, namely, Alek-
sandr Dugin, in terms of both the academic interest in him in North America
and Europe and his media influence in Russia. Dugin is a prolific writer, but
his ideas are chameleon-like, and draw on multiple doctrinal sources, of which
Eurasianism is only one possible orientation. While Dugin has contributed to
spreading the term “Eurasia” and to rehabilitating classical geopolitics in the
manner of Karl Haushofer—according to whom the world is structured by the
opposition between civilizations of the sea (thalassocracies) and civilizations
of the land (tellurocracies)—he also plays a key role in importing into Rus-
sia West European far-right ideologies, and in establishing contacts with its
main representatives, mostly in France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, but also
in Hungary.
Lastly, and unsurprisingly, neo-Eurasianisms are diverse in their the-
matic foci. In many of the Russian Federation’s autonomous republics, the
Eurasianist motif is inflected by the theme of ethnicity; it is used to cele-
brated the unique character of the ethnos and its harmonious integration into
a larger political ensemble. This gives a central place to the Gumilevian prism,
and in this case, indigenous neo-Eurasianism is contrasted with ethnically
Russian neo-Eurasianism, the latter often being judged too “chauvinistic”
or purely “imperialist.” In Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism, Eurasia is seen as a

Postface 189
 
Russian-style formulation of the “Third Way.” Like the German theories of
Conservative Revolution that were contemporaneous with Eurasianism and
inspired its founding fathers in the interwar period, this Third Way refutes
both liberalism and communism, aiming to be a version of fascism “with clean
hands,” absolved of the crimes of World War Two or of the postfascist regimes
that followed it in Europe or Latin America.
Just as its predecessor, neo-Eurasianisms zigzag between scholarly de-
bates about identities and history, and political ideologies, and are character-
ized by blurry boundaries. An incredible incubator of ideas, the Eurasianist
motif can be found in the most diverse forms: it can inspire literary writing,
popular novels (the best-selling science fiction series Etnogenez), contempo-
rary art (Eurasianism inspired the painter Aleksey Belyaev-Gintovt, a re-
cipient of the Kandinsky Prize in 2008), and conspiracy theories as well as
alternative history (for instance, Anatoly Fomenko’s New Chronology, which
attempts to demonstrate that Russia was at the origin of all the great ancient
empires).
Do all of these neo-Eurasianisms and their derivatives share the same
fundamental premises? Two can be indicated that constitute probably the
only unchangeable core of an otherwise polymorphous ideology. The first one
is that Russia is an empire, in the sense that the Russian nation and the Rus-
sian state do not totally overlap, which leaves open problematic interstices:
part of what should be included in the nation (whatever its definition) is to be
found outside the state, and some elements that are not always considered a
part of the nation are inside state boundaries (internal others). The second
premise is that Russia claims its right to the European legacy but refuses a
status as epigone of Europe, which entails either that it exclude itself from
Europe as a value, a political process, or geopolitical system, or else challenges
it from the inside by affirming that it is an authentic Europe against a “false”
one. This last element of the neo-Eurasianist discourse is at odds with the
writings of classical, interwar Eurasianists.

Eurasia without Eurasianism?

However, the major development of the contemporary period is probably

the unprecedented success of the term “Eurasia,” whose influence on Eur-
asianism and neo-Eurasianisms as doctrine has been paradoxical.
The term “Eurasia” largely attained greater visibility for want of some-
thing better: it expresses conveniently, and in a rather intuitive way, the his-
torical space of Russia and its “peripheries,” and a certain geopolitical reality.
The term contains a fundamental terminological ambiguity: Is it Europe and
Asia, or neither Europe nor Asia? “Eurasia” was originally a geographical
term used to designate countries located on the Euro-Asian tectonic plate,

190 Marlene Laruelle

 
thus covering both Europe and Asia. Even in its restricted meaning of being
neither Europe nor Asia, but a median space of Russia and its neighbors,
however, the term does not inspire unanimity. It provoked debate on who
did or did not in fact belong to it, and it is challenged as being Eurocentric
(those standing at the doors of the European Union) or Russocentric (those
that are part of the Russian orbit, whereas China would include Central Asia
in its own neighborhood). The term has profitably replaced “post-Soviet” in
many North American, European, and Asian academic institutions and inter-
national organizations, as a way to describe the post-Soviet space without re-
ferring openly to the Soviet legacy. Paradoxically, it is used to describe Russia
and the new states as well as the new states without Russia. In this way, it is
given adjectives (“Central Eurasia”) to encompass all the “others” of Russia,
both external others—Central Asia, South Caucasus, Mongolia—and internal
ones—North Caucasian, Tatar, Bashkir, and Siberian cultures.
More striking still is the success of the term “Eurasia” within Russia,
and consequently, among Russia’s neighbors. In this instance, too, the term
has found it easy to make a mark within a certain terminological vacuum,
a situation in which it has offered a malleable enough notion enabling it to
be adapted to shifting contexts and different realities. Under the label “Eur-
asia,” it is in fact possible to express a geopolitical principle—that is, Russia’s
claim to be the “pivotal” state and “engine” of the post-Soviet world, and its
right to oversee the strategic orientations of its neighbors. But the term can
also be used to designate a philosophical principle—that is, Russia’s status as
the “other Europe,” an already old notion expressed by the Slavophiles in the
first half of the nineteenth century. In this latter case, Eurasia is above all a
mirror of Europe and the West, a response to what is perceived as a challenge
that would undermine Russianness, and an alternative to what is seen as the
deadlock of liberalism as ideology and the West as a civilization. Lastly, the
term “Eurasia” also points to a third dimension, that of memory, mourning,
and commemoration. Through it Russian society can understand the imperial
and Soviet experiences: it enables, in a complex and painful process, making
peace with the lost past, closing these historical chapters, and at the same
integrating them into a national grand narrative.
And it is probably the way that the term can inhabit the juncture of these
different dimensions that explains its success and its instrumentalization by
the Russian authorities. Indeed, when Vladimir Putin launched his Eurasian
Union project, his speech articulated several dimensions. He proclaimed that
reintegrating the post-Soviet space under its leadership is Russia’s “natural”
geopolitical destiny and that the country cannot be denied this vocation. He
stated that the European Union (EU) has been a successful model to follow
and that Russia should offer an “EU-like” construction to Eurasia, but also

Postface 191
 
increasingly engage in a discourse criticizing liberal principles and call on
Europe to remember its “true” (read: conservative) values. And, last but not
least, he accelerated the previous trend of rehabilitating Russia’s Soviet and,
to a lesser extent, imperial past, in the hope that citizens’ pride in their coun-
try and its legacy would be replicated as support for the regime.
Russia’s actions in Ukraine in 2014 are part of this framework. Moscow
clearly formulated what it would consider its red lines: Ukraine can be inde-
pendent but only if “Finlandized”— that is, it must not adopt an anti-Russian
profile. This red line has been crossed twice, both by discussing the asso-
ciation agreement with the EU and by succumbing to the Maidan revolu-
tion. The price to be paid is therefore twice as high: it had to lose part of its
territory—Crimea—and to be destabilized by the creation of a new “frozen
conflict” though secessionist movements in Donetsk and Lugansk. The signif-
icant support of the Russian population for the annexation of Crimea, which
weakened even the liberal anti-Putin coalitions, marginal as they already
were, again relies on this triple dimension of the Eurasia concept. In his an-
nexation speech of March 18, 2014, Putin raised arguments that were geo-
political (Russia’s legitimate role in Eurasia and its need to defend itself
against possible NATO expansion), philosophical (Russia defending a univer-
sal right to self-determination coming from Europe), and memorial (Sevasto-
pol as a symbol of Soviet and Russian imperial grandeur).
But what is the role of Eurasianisms in this Eurasia? Even if the found-
ing fathers of Eurasianism have all been republished with large print runs
at the beginning of the 1990s—as were all the great authors of the Russian
Silver Age—and the interwar émigré culture was reintegrated into the na-
tional pantheon, they enjoy only success de prestige. In Kremlin circles, the
preference is to refer to Nikolai Berdiaev, Konstantin Leont’ev, and Ivan Ilyin
rather than Nikolai Trubetskoi or Petr Savitskii, who are not on Putin’s com-
munication gurus’ list of “must-read” authors. In the autonomous republics
and in Kazakhstan, the scholarly circles that celebrate Gumilev are much
more interested in his concepts of ethnos and passionarity than in that of Eur-
asia, and they do not return to the founding fathers. Dugin borrows his entire
repertoire from the German Conservative Revolution and from the French
and Italian New Right far more than from the Eurasianist circles of the em-
igration. As for the high senior officials in charge of the Customs Union and
Eurasian Union institutions, they derive inspiration from founding European
texts such as Jean Monet’s, or from Beijing’s rhetoric of Chinese-style harmo-
nious development, but not from Eurasianism.
Lastly, today’s Eurasia is founded on a fundamental ambiguity—a nostal-
gia for empire and the fear of diversity. Russian society presents high rates
of xenophobia—for close to a decade, all opinion surveys have confirmed that,

192 Marlene Laruelle

 
irrespective of the question posed, about two-thirds of citizens would like to
see a reduction in migration levels from the former Soviet southern republics.
In this context, the notion, so important in classical Eurasianism, of Russia’s
inherent familiarity with Asia (although the ambiguities were several, in-
cluding over which kind of Asia was decreed “compatible” with Russia’s Eur-
asian destiny) disappeared from the majority of neo-Eurasianist repertoires.
Central Asia, despite being a key piece in Russia’s Eurasian Union project, is
apprehended as a burden, not as a blessing, that Russia has to bear in order
to protect itself against the West containment. The idea that Asia is calling
Russia toward an “Eastern” destiny is built on a discourse that is entirely
centered on arguments of a geopolitical (Russia’s Pacific façade) and economic
(the Asia-Pacific as the driver of world economy in the twenty-first century)
nature; it is almost entirely devoid of any cultural rationale (such as the pro-
found interaction between Slavic and some Asian populations through the
centuries).
Hence the strange destiny of a movement that has contributed to shaping
Russian intellectual life in the twentieth century—its many ramifications in
the cultural and artistic domains and fertile interactions created with Euro-
pean host countries are still insufficiently understood—but is today both cen-
tral and forgotten. The more “Eurasia” invades Russia’s public space, popular
culture, and state-produced narratives, the more forgetful of its Eurasianist
founding fathers it seems to be.

Postface 193