Eurasianism

Eurasianism (Russian: евразийство, romanized: yevrazíystvo [jɪvrɐˈzʲijstvə]) is a socio-political movement in Russia that emerged in the early 20th century under the Russian Empire, which states that Russia does not belong in the "European" or "Asian" categories but instead to the geopolitical concept of Eurasia and the "Russian world", forming an ostensibly standalone Russian civilization. The ideology is geopolitical, similar to Atlanticism and Gulfism.

The first Eurasianists were mostly émigrés, pacifists, and their vision of the future had features of romanticism and utopianism. The goal of the Eurasianists was the unification of the main Christian churches under the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. A key feature of Eurasianism is the rejection of Russian ethnic nationalism, which seeks to build a pan-Slavic state. The Eurasianists strongly opposed the territorial fragmentation of the Russian Empire that had occurred due to the Bolshevik Revolution and the following civil war (1917–1923). They used their geo-historical theories to insist on the necessity of the geopolitical reconstruction of the Russian state as a unified Eurasian great power. Unlike many of the White Russians, the Eurasianists rejected attempts for Tsarist restoration.

To enable their return, Eurasianist émigrés became supportive of the Bolshevik Revolution, but not its stated goals of building a communist state. Many viewed the Soviet Union as a stepping stone on the path of creating a new national identity that would reflect Russia's geopolitical situation. Eurasianist support for the Soviet Union began in the 1920s during the Stalinist era, which witnessed the emergence of a distinct socialist nationalism through CPSU's enforcement of "Socialism in one country" policy. Despite this, all organized Eurasianist activities in the Soviet Union were ended during the Great Terror of Joseph Stalin (1936–1940). After the Second World War, Stalin's efforts to empower an Eastern Bloc of communist states opposed to the Western capitalist world were seen by Eurasianist remnants as compatible with their own ideology.

Eurasianism underwent a resurgence after the collapse of the Soviet Union during the 1990s, and has been mirrored by Turanism in Turkic nations. This new Eurasianism has been described as a kind of Russian neo-imperialism. Modern Eurasianists have coalesced around three prominent ideological currents: the neo-fascist Eurasianist movement of Aleksandr Dugin; the communist Eurasianism of Gennady Zyuganov; and a state-sanctioned Eurasianism that advances Russian geopolitical interests. Eurasianism has been officially endorsed in Russia's 2023 Foreign Policy Concept approved by Vladimir Putin, which defined Russia as a "Eurasian and Euro-Pacific" civilizational-state closely aligned with China, the Muslim world, and other countries of the Global South, seeking to replace Western hegemony by a "Greater Eurasian Partnership".

"We do not belong to any of the great families of the human race; we are neither of the West nor of the East, and we have not the traditions of either"

The origins of Eurasianism were in the 19th century, when the Russian Empire was involved in constant wars with European powers to its west. Many philosophers, intellectuals and strategists were alienated from Europe and felt Europeanization was a threat to Russia's national identity. Russian poet Fyodor Dostoevsky famously said in 1881: "In Europe we were Tatars, but in Asia too we are Europeans." In the aftermath of events like the Crimean War and the 1878 Berlin Treaty, widely decried as a national humiliation in Russia, a new breed of monarchist elites who advocated eastward expansion, known as vostochniki (Orientalizers), emerged. Many of the vostochniki began emphasizing their "Asianness" to defend the Russian Empire from what they viewed as "intellectual colonization" from the Romano-Germanic cultures of Western Europe. Czarist vostochniki like the philosopher Konstantin Leontiev self-identified as a "Turanian" rather than Slavic, signalling a general Eurasianist cultural shift. Even Pan-Slavic intellectuals began stating their predisposition towards Asia against Europe, Islam and Buddhism above Roman Catholicism, and Turks over the Latins. However, the terminology deployed by the vostochniki had mostly remained ambiguous, with their ideas not attaining a structural ideological character, and served within the frame of Russian imperial interests. The ideas of the monarchist vostochniki would, however, become the precursor to the Eurasianist movement that emerged in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and advocated the formation of a nation-state.

Eurasianism is a political movement with origins in the Russian émigré community in the 1920s who had fled Russia in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution, the Russian civil war and witnessed the socio-political turbulence of the Interwar period. The movement posited that Russian civilization does not belong in the "European" or "Asian" categories and constituted a separate "third continent within the Old World". As anti-monarchists and proponents of an authoritarian republic, Eurasianists praised many aspects of the October Revolution, and they portrayed the Bolshevik movement as a necessary reaction to the rapid modernization of Russian society. Eurasianism was based on a combination of Third-Worldism, resistance to Westernization, championing what it views as the "cultural superiority" of the East over the Western World and defined Eurasia in geographical terms, shared by peoples of Russian-Turkic heritage.

Stalin's "Socialism in one country" policy served as a vindication of Soviet Union in the eyes of many Eurasian activists. These Eurasianists criticized the anti-Bolshevik activities of organizations such as ROVS, believing that the émigré community's energies would be better focused on preparing for this hoped for process of evolution. In turn, their opponents among the emigres argued that the Eurasianists were calling for a compromise with and even support of the Soviet regime, while justifying its ruthless policies (such as the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church and demolition of churches) as mere "transitory problems" that were inevitable results of the revolutionary process. A communist Eurasianist faction led by Pyotr Suvchinsky gained traction during the 1920s, which began denouncing the anti-Soviet critics as "bourgeois".