뉴스레터

Ukrainian War and Russia

It is almost ten months since Russia started a war with Ukraine. This war is not only a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but also a fight between Russia and the West and an internal civil war in Ukraine. This is why it is not easy to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. Another critical reason for this war is the clash of right-wing nationalists in Russia and Ukraine. The complex reasons and motivations are keeping the war going on.

Russia is especially giving its all in this war, linking it with the Russian identity, relations with peripheral ethnicities, and the position of Russia in the world politics. It could be the thought of leaders around Putin, but the fact that numerous nationals are supporting this thought shows that this war can be a new reveal of the Great Russian nationalism that had been suppressed over time, rather than an impulsive desire for territory expansion. Therefore, to look closer to this war, we must go over the core ideology of “Great Russian nationalism” and the mechanisms underneath.

Russian ideology and Eurasianism

The main question that Russia faced as a massive multi-ethnic political body located on the periphery of Europe while embracing various Asian ethnicities as it expanded its territory to the east along with the enhancement of national power during the imperial period is related to how Russia will define relations with Europe and Asia. Eurasianism, the so-called “Russian ideology,” is a critical topic of Russian intellectual history that greatly influenced the overall Russian history, as it is an ideological system that regulates the identity and vocation of the nation.

Two groups appeared within Russia regarding this question. The time when Westernism that views Russia as part of Europe was regarded as the identity of Russia does not take up much of Russian history. The time of Peter the Great that put Russian Imperialism side by side with powerful countries of Europe is when the Europe-oriented vector was prevalent in Russia. However, Peter’s Westernism policy brought about massive social division, or Raskol in Russian, between ruling elites that pursued Westernism and commoners that denied to move on from traditions. Westernism became a development model that tried to catch up with the advanced West with a perspective that viewed Russia less developed.

Meanwhile, unlike the “depraved West” that discontinued Christianity during modernism, Slavophiles that preserved traditional Christianity and pursued to maintain the Russian nature opposed to Westernism and emphasized the unique values of Russia that goes in line with Russia’s nationalism that appeared later. The idea of Slavophilia that stressed Russia’s identity developed to become Eurasianism which states that Russia does not geographically belong to neither Europe nor Asia, but remain as “Eurasia” that has developed unique historical and cultural spaces.

Ancient Eurasianism commenced after the revolution of the Bolsheviks in early 1920, from a publication movement on the path of Russia centered on intellect groups that sought asylum in Prague and Paris. Through the publication of Исход к Востоку(“Outcome to East,” 1921) led by economist Pyotr Savitsky (П.Н. Савицкий), artistic patron Pyotr Suvchinsky(П.П. Сувчинский), philosopher Georges Florovsky(Г.В. Флоровский), and linguist Nikolai Trubetzkoy(Н.С. Трубецкой), and other series of publications led by historian Lev Karsavin(Л.П. Карсавин) and jurist/philosopher Nikolai Alekseev (Н.Н. Алексееву), the role of an “ideological state” based on the unique characteristics of Russia was emphasized, discussing the limitations and possibilities of the revolution of the Bolsheviks. Apart from intellects in exile, there were other scholars like Lev Gumilyov(Л. Н. Гумилев) who studied Eurasianism from inside the Soviet Union. He stressed the independent rhythm and life of Russia in Eurasia as the third area for history and culture that does not belong to Europe nor Asia, but hold civilization of both regions.

The pursue of a revolutionary Russian ideology centering on intellects in exile internally broke up with different opinions on the Bolsheviks government, which later weakened the impact of Eurasianism during the time of the Soviet Union. The power of Eurasianism began to grow after the 1990s, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when active discussions on Russia’s identity and directions were made in the newly established Russia. The chaos and anomie of system transition that New Russia experienced developed to become ideological and systematical crises. The belittlement and ridicule of the West on the falling Russia were left as “humiliating trauma” in the memories of the Russian people. In this context, Eurasianism was seen as the ideology of the incomplete Russia, becoming accepted as an ideological foundation for New Russia by political groups.

Neo-Eurasianism and the ideological journey of the Putin government

Eurasianism in Russian intellectual history that has been finding answers for issues of the East and West appears to be the final version of Russian ideology, but the political mechanism in which it was shown differed by period.

Pro-West liberalists that accepted Westernized development vectors in New Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union attempted rapid economic reform through “shock therapy,” but the impact drastically unstabilized the lives of people and the process of transformation to a multi-level system brought chaos in the overall areas of politics, economy, and society. Russian society gradually became conservative during the time of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, known as a lost decade of Russia, accepting Eurasianism that pursues traditional Russian values. In this vein, Putin who later took office appears to have accepted the Eurasianistic motif, the ideology of the conservative Russia, as the main principle for defining Russia’s identity and vocation. Putin who began his term as a pragmatic internationalist who even tried to join the NATO confronted the West keeping a distance from Russia and became keenly aware of the need of powerful politics. His speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 let the world know about the new leader of Russia who pursued conservatism and great-powerism. His second term ended with the Russo-Georgian War in 2008.

Putin started his third term in 2010. Dreaming of the revival of Russian imperialism based on Eurasianism, he emphasized efforts to strengthen regional integration, such as the Eurasian Economic Union. He expanded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that was launched based on existing strategic cooperations between Russia and China to cover the whole area of Eurasia and reinforced the mechanisms of global impact centered on international networks, such as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies including Russia (OPEC+), Gas Exporting Countries Forum(GECF), and BRICS.

Russia’s national strategy that was formed by this kind of policies of Putin focused on building Greater Eurasia that reinforced the identity of Eurasia. However, the ideology beneath this idea is not the traditional Eurasianism that was mentioned earlier, but “Neo-Eurasianism” as an imperialistic ideology to overcome the chaos and history of “national humiliation” that were experienced during the systemic transformation of Russia. Neo-Eurasianism developed through countless debates among ideologues after the chaotic 1990s. Scholars such as A. Panarin and A. Tsymburskiy and other activists such as Alexander Dugin, Ivan Ilyin, and A. Prokhanov are those who participated in the process. Neo-Eurasianism generally sees from a bihemispheric worldview that fights between the solidarity of the West-centered Atlantic and that of Eurasian powers formed by Russia, China, India, and Iran are the main conflict structure of world politics. Main countries of Eurasia have formed solidarity in this process and made a goal to overcome and multipolarize the US-centered unipolar hegemony order and establish multi-regional world order. They begin to think that Russia should become the central power of geopolitics based on solidarity of Eurasia and fulfill the mission of overcoming the contradictions of global politics such as neoliberal globalization by the US-led Atlantic solidarity. Neo-Eurasianism also supports anti-modernism and anti-Westernism based on Orthodoxy socially and culturally, placing importance on conservative cultural ideology by preserving traditional values. Therefore, neo-Eurasianism strongly opposes to neoliberal globalization led by the U.S. and the West, having a characteristic of political and social movement that pursues an alternative globalization.

Sergey Karaganov pays attention to the advent of the new cold war, or clash between the West and non-West, stressing that Great Eurasia is a strategic solidarity that can replace the liberal international order led by the weakened West with a new kind of international order. Experts in Russia argue that the idea of the Great Eurasia is to create a single economic bloc by integrating main powers of Eurasia. In the end, this strategy is to weaken the unipolar system led by the U.S. and pursue a multipolar system. In the core of this idea, there is trilateral cooperations between China, Russia, and India, the most powerful countries in Eurasia.

However, there is a chance that neo-Eurasianism joins the Great Russian nationalism by stressing the centricalness of Russia and establishing a geopolitical imperial in Eurasia. In fact, Putin’s domestic and international policies for his third and fourth terms do not portray him as a pragmatic internationalist anymore. The Russo-Georgian War in 2008 that was seen as a signal that Russia will no longer be pushed around for NATO’s expansion to the East led to annexation of Crimea and intranational conflicts in Donbas in 2014. In the end, the pursue of imperialism based on the “Great Russian nationalism” collided with the “far-right nationalism of Ukraine” that arose in Ukraine after Euromaidan, thereby causing the Russo-Ukrainian War. Great Russian nationalism also affected Russia internally, amending the Constitution that made way to extend presidential terms almost infinitely. In Putin’s fourth term, the argument of some neo-Eurasianists including Dugin that claim that Ukraine is part of the Great Russia and that the two countries share one history has been officially included in the presidential speech. As it can also be seen from the process of justifying imperial war of aggression like the Russo-Ukraine war, the conservative Russia that dreams of the revival of the Eurasian imperial is seen as a challenger of world order.

Russia-Eurasia and Korea

The plan of the Great Eurasia based on neo-Eurasianism belief differs from ancient efforts for constructing imperialism. It pursues fundamental changes in international order by challenging the propositions of Ocean Geopolitics explained by Nicholas Spykman and Zbigniew Brzezinski; that is, the principle of the need to prevent the appearance of a hegemonic state or hegemonic solidarity on the Eurasian continent. It is uncertain whether Great Eurasian solidarity with China, India, as well as Iran and Turkey that Russia has formed with great effort will bring multipolarized and multinational order beyond the US-led international order of liberalism. However, international situations that has been changing after the Ukraine War is showing the difficulty of maintaining unipolar hegemonic order.

In this time of massive transition, Korea is facing a critical challenge. The recent provocation of North Korea is a new challenge that we have never experienced in the post-Cold War era. Korea's unprecedented success of realizing economic growth and democracy in solidarity with sea powers should now find ways to overcome the impact of divisions in world politics. Korea’s geopolitical position is too ambivalent to disregard the continental changes to develop our historical identity as a true peninsular country. Therefore, Korea must prepare strategies for multi-transitions that embrace the continental vector of development that is reviving in over a century together with existing development vectors of the sea. It must also reinforce solidarity with middle power countries in the Eurasian Rimland with similar geopolitical conditions to Korea and strive to expand space for strategic freedom. Whether the turbulent wave will work as a drive to a new world is up to us.