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International Affairs:
A Russian Journal
Russia and the Worldwide Eastern Question
By N. Narochnitskaia
Early in this century the Serbs and Serbia as the outpost of the Orthodox world along the Drina River were the object of the Mitteleuropa geopolitical projects. At the end of this century they are the object of brazen military-political actions. Their aim is obvious: to divide the Orthodox Slavs, to suppress their will to lead full-blooded historical life as states, to deprive them of their international roles, and to turn the post-Byzantine space into the Atlantic civilization’s domain.
The missile strikes at Serbia which NATO launched on 24 March, 1999, brought into a bolder relief the changes in the military-strategic and ideological situation in Eastern Europe. East European states join NATO for different reasons yet it is obvious that the small countries at the strategic meeting points of the rival geopolitical systems cannot pursue independent foreign policies. Today, they are part of an anti-Russian combination. The North Atlantic Alliance acquired a much more pronounced anti-Russian nature when Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic joined it. Its attitude to the Orthodox Slavs has become much more negative.
In the past these nations either themselves or as parts of the Habsburg Empire attacked Russia and the Orthodox Slavs or pressed upon them. In the fourteenth century, as a result of a Hungarian conquest, part of the Serbs were turned Catholic. They developed into Croats whose hatred of their historical roots as presented by the Orthodox Serbs is overwhelming. Croatia fought together with Hitler and exterminated Serbian civilians. The centuries-old reality—Polish animosity towards Russia—had revealed itself at all times when Poland was a mighty and independent power until Russia overwhelmed it with her own might. It is ridiculous to explain six hundred years (between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries) of unprovoked expansion to the western fringes of the Russian Orthodox lands by the “divisions of Poland” and “czarism.”
At the time of troubles and domestic strife in Russia these nations participated, in one form or another, in anti-Russian hostile and aggressive acts. The examples are numerous: from the Napoleonic invasion to the intervention into Russia caught in the fires of the Civil War. Hungarians, Czechs, and Poles all invaded Russia. It should be added that the Finns did not show ill feelings towards the former “mother-country.” Despite the sad experience of the Soviet-Finnish war Finland has been and remains a good neighbor. Everything written about Russian imperialism in this country and abroad notwithstanding, one obvious fact stands apart as a general result of ten centuries of Mediaeval and modern history. It was the West using the spear of East European Catholics that was consistently moving eastward from the tenth to the mid-twentieth century. The territory of Russia was consistently pushed further away from the cradle of the Russian statehood.
The Crimean and Potsdam conferences changed the situation: for fifty years the Soviet Union was exercising its influence over entire Eastern Europe. Toynbee wrote that for the first time in the last millennium the West experienced pressure from Russia—throughout centuries she had been experiencing pressure from the West. 1 It was at that time that Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia turned out to be less reliable partners of the Soviet bloc than the divided Germans. It is indicative that they unequivocally approved NATO bombing of the Serbian positions in Krajna and Bosnia, joined NATO without questions, and approved the aggression against Yugoslavia launched by the North Atlantic Alliance on 24 March in violation of international legal norms.
Obviously, against the backdrop of East European countries joining NATO Orthodox Serbia that refused to curb to the Atlantic diktat is seen as an impossible trouble-maker in the bloc’s rear. Pressure was mounting until it reached the stage of war.
When encroaching on Russia’s interests and those of rebellious Slavic Orthodox “barbarians” today, as in the past, the Catholic West, and the Anglo-Saxon interests in the first place, form a geopolitical and spiritual alliance with Islam. The West did not shun from setting up a belligerent Muslim state, Bosnia, in the heart of Europe despite the proclaimed strategic aim of its leader Izetbegovic to create an Islamic federation stretching from the Adriatic to the Great Chinese Wall. 2 Today, there are plans to separate Kosovo from Serbia by force. The West is out to give to the Albanians, through military actions, the land which is the cradle of the Serbian statehood, the Nemanyich state and the homeland of St. Savva of Serbia. Back in 1945, the Albanians were in the minority in Kosovo and this despite the fact that the Serbs suffered the greatest per capita loss of life in World War II.
One can clearly see that occupation of Kosovo is a well-planned aim of the United States that has to be reached despite the real state of affairs in Yugoslavia and the policy of its leaders. In fact, this is an act of aggression against a sovereign state in which nothing extraordinary happened (similar things took place elsewhere: in Ulster, the Basque Country, Kashmir, and Chechnya). This sovereign state does not present a menace to any of the NATO members and is not in a state of conflict with them. To pursue their aims the United States were prepared to use any pretext or to do without it. They did not hesitate to become an aggressor tramping on international laws.
The United States are using Albanians in their fight against the stubborn Slavs and they want to control the process to serve their own interests. This is becoming all the more important since Islam is turning into a most serious geopolitical, demographic, financial, and military factor. Hypothetically a moment will come when the Islamic states try to realize their geopolitical aims in world history without hesitation and consultations with their Western patrons. The Sublime Porte that for five decades has been a loyal NATO ally on the southern approaches to Russia and an outpost of “democracy” clearly shows that it is out for a revanche. It seems that NATO and the United States being aware that the Turks had twice marched on Vienna in fact occupied Bosnia with the help of the Dayton mechanism.
The Yugoslav drama that is unfolding at the crossroads of world civilizations reflects all the contradictions of the world, the twentieth century, and the Yugoslav nation. The contempt of Eastern barbarians for many centuries underlaid Western cultural and historical consciousness. The Roman Catholic pressure on Orthodoxy was going on for many centuries. These contradictions are the sad result of competition of two projects of the paradise on Earth that required no God: the Marxian and the liberal. These contradictions are spiritual and geopolitical rivalry on the post-Byzantine territory and around Russia when the historical Russian state disappeared. Just like in the nineteenth century, the future of the Balkan nations is decided by others.
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By the second half of the nineteenth century the Eastern question had acquired a definite shape. This shape allows to discern all the aspects and levels of the contradictions and the moving forces of world history which, by that time, had moved to the forefront of European politics and created its secret springs. This makes it possible to identify certain patterns.
During the preceding two centuries the subjects of international relations that preserved their roles to our days had been taking shape. As early as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the balance of forces in Europe changed cardinally: the strongest powers left the stage by the end of the period. Poland, Sweden, and Turkey declined while England inspired by the Puritan conviction of its superiority and business activity was swiftly advancing. At the same time Russia’s might increased—this was of tremendous importance for the balance of forces in Europe. By that time Russia had turned into a huge empire stretching from the Baltics to the Pacific—the size unrivaled in Europe since the Roman Empire.
By the end of the eighteenth century the country had finally developed from Rus to Russia. The Orthodox civilization free from the Catholic Kulturtrager aggressiveness could survive only by spreading to vaster areas. All Russian czars were aware of this, consciously or unconsciously, starting with Aleksandr Nevskii who saved Orthodoxy from the threat of being engulfed by Catholicism to Peter the Great. The latter did not appreciate Russian originality yet was the first to discern the country’s and the nation’s huge potential. He was aware of the new geopolitical needs of his state that lay paralyzed by Sweden and Poland that pressed on it from one side and the Crimean Khanate, a Turkish vassal, on the other (the Crimea was, in fact, part of the Golden Horde that had conquered Orthodox Taurida).
This transformation went through confrontation on the Ugra River, the Time of Troubles and driving the Poles away from the Kremlin they desecrated. Reestablishment of the shared historical destinies of three Slavic nations—the Malorussians, Byelorussians, and Velikorussians—was of special importance for this transformation. Together, they became unassailable and immune to the anti-Orthodox pressure. Russia gained access to seas: the Baltic in the northwest, the Black in the south where she entrenched herself in the Crimea, and to the Pacific thus completing development of Siberia and the Far East. It was in this process and along this road where Russians shed their blood that Potemkin got the title of Tavricheskii (Taurida), Rumiantsev, Zadunaiskii (trans-Danube), Suvorov, Rymnikskii (the Rimnik river in Romania), Dibich, Zabalkanskii (trans-Balkan), Paskevich, Erivanskii (Erevan), the Muravievs, Karskii (Kars in the Caucasus) and Amurski (the Amur). One finds it hard to visualize the world in which Siberia and the Far East fell an easy prey of China and Japan. What would have happened to Europe which, having turned the Eastern Slavs Catholic, came into a direct confrontation with Asia represented first by nomadic Mongolians and then the Turks who at least once reached Vienna?
“Civilized” Europe saved by the Russian outpost from many devastating marches found it hard to accept these geopolitical shifts. Pushkin wrote: “In its attitude to Russia Europe has always been equally ignorant and ungrateful.” The Catholic West tried to deprive Russia of her status of a Black Sea power through the Crimean War and the humiliating Paris Peace (“neutralization” of the Black Sea is amazingly close to the present situation.) Nearly ten years were needed for illustrious Chancellor Gorchakov to recover the lost rights. The famous circular letter of 1870 showed the world that Russia had “concentrated.” The short-sighted “Anglo-French” Europe paid for Russia’s humiliation with a new European power coming to the scene: Germany united by Prussia.
The “Russia and Europe” problem is not new. There is nothing new “in the discovery that other nations do not know us and do not understand us. They are afraid of Russia, do not sympathize with her and rejoice at her weakening,” wrote Ivan Il’in with a tinge of bitterness. He continued: “Mikhail Lomonosov and Aleksandr Pushkin were the first to grasp Russia’s originality, her dissimilarity from Europe, and her non-European nature. Fedor Dostoeyvsky and Nikolai Danilevsky were the first to discover that Europe did not know, understand or love us. Much time has passed since then. We should have experienced themselves and confirm that these great Russians were far-sighted and correct in their conclusions.” 3
It was the talent and erudition of Sergey Solov’ev, great Russian historian, that urged him to discuss the subject in a broader context than that suggested by the political and diplomatic frameworks of the second half of the nineteenth century. At that time this was merely the question of the Straits and the future of the Slavic and Greek territories freed from the Turkish yoke. He saw as the Worldwide Eastern Question the millennium-long historical rivalry between Europe and Asia, “between the European and Asian spirit.” His panoramic view of history produced a realization that the contest and rivalry of civilizations were an important moving force of history: “There were Xerxes’ hordes that invaded the Peloponnese; there was Alexander the Great with his phalanxes and Homer’s “Iliad” on the shores of the Euphrates, there were the Huns on the Catalonian fields, there were Crusaders in the Palestine, or Tatar baskaks collecting tribute in Moscow... Finally, there were the Mongol invasion, Russian flags in Astrakhan, Kazan, and Tashkent. All of this was the signs of the same contest that went on in the wars against the Ottoman Empire up till the twentieth century.” 4
In the West the “worldwide Eastern question” was developed in classical geopolitics that looked into the historical patterns of mutual deterrence and the “vast spaces” contest. This school proceeded, to a great extent, from the idea of the struggle of states as the struggle for survival in the organic world. To some extent this can be described as social-Darwinism. In classical geopolitics and H.J. Mackinder’s schemes 5 which provide the foundation for the Western containment policy vis-a-vis Russia, Eurasia is termed the World Island. Those who control it control the world. The southern Europe-Asia border with the center near Taurida is described as the Heartland, the center of Earth. Those who control it hold the key to the World Island. This abstraction is a purely naturalistic interpretation of history that cannot explain all the moving forces. It resurfaced time and again in the fight between and cooperation of the nations, Russia in the first place, living in this heartland. The same can be said about another problem of the nineteenth century—control over the Straits.
The strategy of solving the Europe-Russia contradiction through making her member of European coalitions and part of Europe is false and doomed to a failure. A larger part cannot be integrated by a smaller—it should be first made smaller. (Witness the fate of the Soviet Union, Yalta, and Potsdam as the price Russia had to pay for a place in the Gorbachev-Sakharov common European home.) This is explained by a millennium-old rejection by the West of Orthodox Russia in all her hypostases which is reflected in the Worldwide Eastern Question. Russia is the vehicle of Byzantine legacy the West hates so much. At the same time, as a geopolitical force and a historical personality looking for her own universal meaning of world existence Russia is equal to the West.
The worldwide Eastern question can be seen not only in the great powers’ policies but also in philosophical interpretation of history. Hegel who crowned West European philosophy with his Philosophy of History wrote that only the West had “the right to free creation in the world stemming from subjective consciousness.” He failed to discover other “world-historical nations.” Russia developed into a vast geopolitical and historical entity viewed as alien to the West. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Western historiography offered an extremely hostile interpretation of Russian history and policy.
All social strata in the West, from court historians to liberals and Marxists, demonstrated nihilism in relation to Russia’s historical existence. The deeply-rooted Western phobias of Orthodoxy and Russia took on various forms yet they existed in Papal Rome and were voiced by atheist Voltaire, Marquis de Custine and Marx, the ideologists of early Bolshevism, and Andrei Sakharov, the idol of Moscow liberals. There is no doubt that the classics of Marxism lead in the nihilist interpretation of nineteenth-century Russian history and foreign policies. Back in 1848 Engels wrote that the revolution had only one really frightening enemy which was Russia.
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Marx and Engels agreed with the denigrating descriptions of Russian policy and borrowed their arguments from British publications which said that Britain had had to conquer India to prevent Russians from crossing the Himalayas. In their works the “classics” followed all the trends of nineteenth-century Western thinking that shaped anti-Russian sentiments. Everything was concentrated in these sentiments: hatred of the aristocratic principles of statehood and the czars typical of the Third Estate and the lumpens, rejection of the religious principles of supreme power and sobornost’, an open hatred of Orthodoxy as an embodiment of Christianity. Marx who lived and worked in Britain was obviously enslaved by Anglo-Saxon foreign political propaganda. In the same way Engels worked under a strong impact of the German classical historical-philosophical school that preached that Russia and the Slavs were unable to independently set up a powerful state and pursue successful diplomacy.
In his Revolution and Counterrevolution in Germany Engels offered a frightening picture: all civilized nations were threatened by a possible unification of the Slavs. They “may push aside or destroy the self-imposed guests... Turks, Hungarians and, in the first place, the hated Germans.” The nightmare of mythical pan-Slavism allegedly headed by Russian autocracy plagued Engels in the same way as the nightmare of coalitions plagued Bismarck. Engels wrote: “This ridiculous and antihistoric movement has posed itself an aim of subjugating the civilized West to the barbarian East, the city to the village, industry and spiritual culture to primitive landtilling by serf Slavs. This theory was backed by frightening reality represented by the Russian Empire. With each its step this empire betrays its claim to regard entire Europe as the prize of the Slavic tribe and especially of Russians as their only most active part. In the last 150 years this empire never lost its territory—it extended it with each new war. Central Europe is aware of the intrigues through which Russian policy supported the newly created theory of pan-Slavism.”
Engels’ revolutionary fire was fed not only by the alleged pan-Slavistic sentiments of the Russian czars. It was also fed by Mikhail Bakunin’s “democratic pan-Slavism.” Bakunin offered an idea of a natural blend of the revolutionary flows of Western Europe and the Slavs into a genuine common European revolution. Engels regarded this as heresy. Indeed, Bakunin was bold enough to suggest that the Slavs were worthy of contributing to the revolutionary struggle in Europe—meanwhile they were given no place in it.
In his article about the aims of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Engels distinguished himself in a polemics on the ethnic issue. He said that in the next world war not only “the reactionary classes and dynasties but also the reactionary nations will disappear from Earth.” “This will be progressive,” said he. The classic of internationalism believed that the Slavs “were not viable and will not be able to obtain independence of any sort.” They allegedly “never had a history of their own. At the very moment when they reached the first, and the lowest, civilization stage they fell under foreign power or were forcibly lifted to the first stage of civilization with the help of foreign yoke.” In his rage Engels lost all vestiges of internationalism. The Slaves were originally counterrevolutionary, he argued, they “everywhere subjugated the revolutionary nations.” Germans and Hungarians “gifted and energetic” brought civilization to their Slavic neighbors. It should be said in all justice that the “classic” regarded the Poles as the only exception. While denying the Orthodox Slavs the right to fight against Habsburg Austria the Marxists seemed to feed the Poles’ hatred of “reactionary” Russia.
With a great deal of bitterness Aleksandr Herzen described the meeting at which Adam Mickiewicz called for another march of European nations on Russia under leadership of “a representative of great France.” By this he meant Napoleon III-it was rather disgraceful for a liberal but nothing counted when an attack on Russia was on the agenda. It seems that Mickiewicz was ignorant of the true cost of the Polish question offered by the revolutionary ideologists. In the same way he was obviously ignorant that his idol Napoleon Bonaparte regarded Poland as a small coin in the game he was playing. This can be clearly seen in the offers he made before the Tilsit Peace Treaty was signed. When the hopes of another Polish uprising igniting Russia and blowing up the European system failed the coin became devalued. In a letter to Marx Engels called the Poles “une nation foutue, a means to be saved until Russia was involved in an agrarian revolution.”
It was the permanent design to channel the Poles to the East to involve them in a war with Russia to resolve the Western Polish frontiers issue in Germany’s favor. “The problem of delimitation among the nations would have become of secondary importance compared to the central problem, that of a reliable frontier against the common enemy. Having acquired vast territories in the East the Poles would have become much more manageable in the West.” The letter is concluded in an impressive way: “We take from the Poles all we can in the West, occupy their fortresses with Germans, devour their foodstuffs. If we manage to attract the Russians we shall join them to wrench more concessions from the Poles.”
The lifestyle of these pillars of Marxism presented a striking contrast to their philosophy. Those researchers who compared Russian revolutionaries and their spiritual fathers pointed out that Marx and Bakunin were complete antipodes. Among other things Bakunin accused Marx and the Communist International of serving solely Jewish aims. This was one of the reasons behind their conflict. 6 Everything in Bakunin was genuine: his struggle, his suffering, and his death. Everything in Marx was false: 30 years of instigations from the British Museum library, comfortable life at the expense of Engels, marriage of convenience and a German aristocratic wife, rich funeral with speeches—in short, a typical philistine waging a war against the “bourgeoisie.”
Engels’ article On Foreign Policy of Russian Czarism that appeared in 1890 in Die neue Zeit and Time, and also Marx’s work Secret Diplomatic History of the 19th Century repeated all the myths that the hostile European forces ascribed to Russia. In Soviet times their most odious works related to Russia were kept under lock. In his article Engels insisted that Russia’s international victory scored in the nineteenth century had been engineered by a powerful band of talented foreign adventurers who “founded a sort of new Jesuit order,” who skillfully duped the European rulers, an object of Engels’ obvious sympathies. “This band turned Russia into a great, powerful, and scaring state on a road to world domination.”
In this article Engels was obviously hostile to Russia’s historical existence and followed in the footsteps of the worst insinuations of British and Polish emigre publicist writings. This was why Stalin selected it as his first strategic aim. He started by cautiously correcting the anti-Russian aspects of orthodox Bolshevism with an elaborate criticism of this work in a letter to the Politburo of 19 July, 1934 “On Engels’ Article ‘Foreign Policy of Russian Czarism.” It appeared in print in May 1941 (Bolshevik, No. 9), on the eve of Hitler’s attack. The Serbs had been already defending the Slavs while Russia had to be inspired with the national spirit and patriotism undermined by internationalism. Stalin’s work is an amazing example of Machiavellianism. He skillfully juggled with Marxist postulates and cynically praised the “founders’” genius. At the same time the Soviet leader left no stone unturned in Engels’ accusations of Russia as “the last outpost of reaction in Europe”; he also caught Engels at passing in silence the Anglo-German antagonism, an objective cause of the world war.
Engels passionately insisted that Russia was striving to capture Constantinople and that “the menace of a world war will disappear on the day when the course of events in Russia will allow the Russian nation to abandon the traditional aggressive policy of its czars.” This total nihilism confirmed Tiutchev’s profound remark about the main European contradiction—that between the revolution and Russia. At that time this ideological aspect of the Worldwide Eastern Question was screened by the contradictions between the great powers.
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The 1878 Berlin Congress united all the West European forces for the first time with the single aim to belittle Russia’s victory. The titans of European diplomacy—Andrassy, Salisbury, Bismarck, and Disraeli—closed their ranks against Russia that had shed blood for the Balkan nations’ independence and taken nothing of their territory. The following stage of international relations was leading to a new split in “the European concert”. Therefore, from the point of view of the stages of the Worldwide Eastern Question, this was not a new stage. The contradictions among the West European powers were still as deep as their contradictions with Russia so she was invited into coalitions.
The Russia-Germany relations were worsening which the Anglo-Saxons had always liked and which was always unfortunate for Europe. The 1879 Austria-Germany alliance was a fateful step; more coalitions were formed. Later they came to grips in World War I. Germany itself paid dearly for Bismarck’s trick. His main objective, France’s isolation, was not reached. In 1893 Russia and France signed an agreement; Britain and Germany entered into another round of international political meandering and their uncompromising rivalry. The general trend of events finally shaped specific Austria-German interests and created the Entente.
The European Concert was divided into two blocs which immediately echoed on the Balkans. The Oriental Question came to the forefront once more. A chain of Balkan crises introduced World War I: the Bosnian crisis of 1908-1909 and the Balkan wars. Today we can draw analogies and learn our lessons.
There are many people whose knowledge about Bulgaria is limited by the gratitude the Bulgarians expressed to Russia which delivered it from the Ottoman yoke and by the fact that Russian lost many lives in the war for Bulgarian liberation. They are amazed at statements of Bulgarian leaders that their country is ready to join NATO. Contrary to this view (generally shared in Soviet times) Russia should not expect much of Bulgaria. Everything was wasted: the tears of I. Aksakov he shed when he learned how the San Stefano Peace Treaty had been “edited” at the Berlin Congress and Bulgaria was divided. Wasted were the diplomatic efforts of Count Ignatiev, the Russian Ambassador in Constantinople, a confirmed Slavophile and Bulgariaphile. When the country was reunited it had been already under an Austrian influence. Under Ferdinand of Coburg it was finally drawn into Austrian and German politics and entered World War I on their side. All the memory of the nation can do is to somehow limit the Bulgarian liberals’ pro-Western orientations.
The history of the relationships between the West and Serbia provides a different lesson—it seems that the Serbian liberals came to realize this. At least, Vuk Draskovic, who attended President Clinton’s inauguration ceremony, is now siding with President Milosevic on foreign policy issues. The Serbian-Bulgarian war was a sad episode in the history of Slavs. It sent its waves to World War II and beyond. All hope to settle Serbia’s centuries-old problems with Austrian help failed. A century and a half ago, just as today, the West was not prepared to accept the idea of the Serbs united in a single state, something that they regarded as a natural national-historical task. Austria was nurturing the Drang nach Suden idea—to get an access to the warm Mediterranean, important and ancient dream of Germany and Austria. When, upon dynastic changes, Serbia turned to Russia Austria hastened to realize its long-nurtured project, that of “incorporating” the Serbian areas into the Habsburg Empire and turn it either into a tripartite empire or a federal state. This was what heir apparent Francis Ferdinand was campaigning for.
The further events of the 1908-1909 Bosnian crisis looked very much like what NATO is doing. Austria-Hungary was convinced that a bold annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina would be meekly accepted by Russia crippled in the Russo-Japanese war. Foreign Minister Aehrenthal offered an opinion: “I know Russia as my own pocket. She will definitely not start a war.” This plan succeeded in the same way as the West’s present expectations: the vast-spreading political and national troubles and economic chaos do not allow Russia to act. Izvolski’s attempt to appease Austria and offer concessions on other Balkan issues in return of abandoning the annexation plans was neither productive nor honorable. Kozyrev’s diplomacy was even less so.
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It is for a century and a half that the West has been fearing Russia and large-scale Slavic alliances. Nothing has changed by the end of the twentieth century. Il’in wrote that no efforts to serve the general European causes could alter this attitude-neither liberation of Europe from Napoleon, nor rescuing Prussia in 1805-1815, nor Aleksandr III’s peaceful policies. Even after Russia’s feat of delivering Europe from the threat of complete annihilation by Hitler Russia and the Slavs remained for the West a mysterious void to be educated, turned Catholic, “colonized” and civilized. She can be used for trade and other aims and intrigues. At all time she should be weakened at all costs.
In his A Great Chessboard Brzezinski describes Russia as a “black hole.” Every page is filled with almost indecent hints at the Russians’ and the Orthodox Slavs’ cultural inferiority as compared with other ethnic groups in the world and in the historical Russian state. Amazing continuity indeed! This smacks not so much of Hegel’s theory of historical and non-historical peoples as of Engels’ malicious impatience with which he looked forward at disappearance on the anti-historical Slavs and the immanently reactionary Russian nation.
This continuity goes much further back than one hundred and fifty years: its history is almost millennium-old. In his letter to St. Bernard of Clairvaux the Bishop of Krakow Matthew wrote that the Orthodox Slavs were anti-Christian and barbarian and that a crusade against the Russian barbarians who failed to harmonize either with Catholicism or Greek Orthodoxy was desirable. The bishop regarded the Russians as being worse than the Byzantine schismatics.
All great Russian thinkers of the past addressed the global “Russia and Europe” dilemma. The problem provides the background to Russia’s advance towards a catastrophe, the Western global Kulturtrager aspirations (that are not limited to the materialist criteria), an open blackmail, and the aggression against Yugoslavia.
Russia is not alone who is suffering from this. Europe, that played a great role in history and culture in the past, is losing it. Its heroic inspiration, the ideals and feats, even doubts of Descartes, the very “madness of destructive freedom” were all introduced by the Christian spirit. The capitulation to the Atlantic civilization that is going on is the final decline of Europe, “Untergang des Abendlandes,” as Spengler put it.
This new role is aptly symbolized by the NATO Secretary General Solana’s ambiguous and always improper smile. It brings to mind Kipling’s Jungle Book and Tabaqui the Jackal’s smile with which he announced the rude and oppressive will of his master Shere Khan who violated the Law. This is Pax Americana that has replaced not only the Holy Roman Empire and Moscow the Third Rome, but all other materialist and universalistic utopias of Godless paradise on Earth: “the worldwide fraternity of labor,” “the common European home,” and the “united world.”
As the year 2001 is drawing closer Russia and Europe may both profit from cooperation. This powerful and very much needed impulse will be produced not by Europe’s testing Russia’s conformity to West European liberalism. This impulse needs a fruitful and constructive interaction and combined and conscious spiritual efforts of Europe’s ethnic, confessional, and cultural elements—Romanic, Germanic and Slavic—of Catholic and Orthodox Europe. Time has come to grasp the significance of the Russian Orthodox outpost for the entire Christian world in the face of not only geopolitical and demographic, but also spiritual, challenges of the coming century.
Natalia Narochnitskaia is a senior researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Endnotes
Note 1: A. Toynbee, “The World and the West: Russia,” The Listener, November 20, 1952. Back.
Note 2: See: A. Izetbegovic. The Islamic Declaration. A Program for Islamization of Muslims and the Muslim Peoples, Saraevo, 1990. Back.
Note 3: I.A. Il’in, Protiv Rossii. Nashi zadachi, Moscow, 1992. Back.
Note 4: S.M. Solov’ev, Istoria Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1959-1966, p. 56. Back.
Note 5: Halford J. Mackinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” Geographical Journal, Vol. 23, No. 4, London. Back.
Note 6: See Michel Bacounine, Polemique contre les juifs, Paris, 1869. Back.