World Affairs

World Affairs

Vol. 8, Number 1 (January-March 2004)

Eurasia Viewed from an Historical Height
Andrey Foursov

Eurasia, the world's heartland found its principal political expression in the Russian imperial state, an heir to the Mongol Horde and in its successor, the Soviet Union. As the only transcontinental power, Russia contained for centuries Anglo-Saxon liberal hegemonic expansion. A new Eurasian Union is needed to protect the old continent's peoples and cultures.

An Overview

As a boy I read a book by the famous American science fiction writer and specialist of chemistry I Asimov, View from a height (1964). The book was devoted to astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology. According to Asimov there are two ways of looking at the 'garden of science'. The first perspective is from below, in which we notice a lot of details, even the minutest ones but are unable to get a holistic picture like many experts, who "know more and more about less and less". The second perspective is to try to have a position high enough to take a look at the garden as a whole. We may miss some specifics but the overall gain is evident—the whole picture enables us to see the elements better and, to understand them better in the context of the whole—it is the whole which determines the parts, not the opposite.

The same is true with the development and history not only of science, but of any system, especially so in the sphere of social-historical sciences. In the last decades the dominant tendency in socio-historic sciences was towards 'parcellisation' of the object of the study into smaller and smaller pieces, getting always further away from the grand narrative, of 'the view from a height'. This tendency was strengthened in the postmodern climate. Now we are stepping into a new epoch which makes it necessary to elaborate a theory of history and a grand historical narrative again. Social practice demands it. "What can be more practical than a good theory"? Albert Einstein used to ask. But one cannot make one general theory from a hundred empirical generalisations of parts. Just as one cannot make one cat out of a hundred mice. A holistic view from a height is to my mind a good first step to and a prerequisite for the elaboration of 'practical theory'. The object of my view from 'a historical height' is Eurasia in 'très, très longue durée', as Braudel would say of its history.

I have chosen this subject not only because I am a Russian of mixed origin, hence really Eurasian but because Eurasia was the birthplace of many great civilisations and empires. History was made by and through Eurasia. Hence control over Eurasia, especially over its massive and spacious heartland was of concern for those who had a 'vested interest' in world hegemony. If at the end of the nineteenth century the British geopoliticians were speaking of the necessity to control Eurasia, at the end of the twentieth century Zbigniew Brzezinski an American imperialist with Slav roots openly called Eurasia the main geopolitical prize for the USA.

In discussing the history of Eurasia several interrelated questions come to mind:

The Heartland and the Belt

When you look at Eurasia you see at least two different or distinct parts. One is usually identified as the heartland, and the other as the seashore land stretching from the North Sea to the Sea of Japan—sometimes known as the littoral belt, and sometimes as the Eurasian Rim, where the greatest civilisations of the old world did emerge.

Whereas the belt was almost totally agricultural, the heartland was both agricultural and nomadic, and the core of the heartland—the core of Eurasia that is, Central (or Core) Asia—was the realm of nomadic tribes living a pastoral economy (which is now roughly the territory occupied by Mongolia, Kazakhstan, southern Siberia and the Chinese province of Xinjiang). Since the seventeenth century nomads ceased to play a crucial role in Eurasian history—their historical space, their Lebensraum was diminishing. The Russian empire from the north and the Qing Empire from the south were squeezing them into historical insignificance. Yet history did not begin in the seventeenth century. Until then, during almost three thousand years it was precisely the nomads of Central Asia who determined the fate of Eurasia and even that of the Old World as a whole. The events in Core Asia—the formation and dissolution of the great nomadic tribal empires—triggered human tidal waves which swept Eurasia and changed the historical landscape drastically, bringing into existence new empires and even new social systems (the latest ones in the Far West of Eurasia). It is also worth noting that these westward surges from the Core of Asia generated reactions in the form of counter expansions from the West. This ebb and flow alternated in pendulum-like motion—the old world pendulum. Its oscillations had a cyclical character which, I believe, consists of the (700-800 years long) cycles of Eurasian history. Let us have a closer look at them.

The Historical Cycles

In the twelfth century BC the intertribal struggle in Core Asia provoked a migration all over the Eurasian steppes. Indo-Europeans on their chariots burst into the Eastern European plain. From there they began storming the Balkans and set in motion the process which historians call "the crisis of the twelfth century BC" which shook the old Mediterranean world. Even Egypt was devastated by 'the peoples of the sea'. However, Bickford's fuse had already been ignited some two centuries before in Core Asia.

Eight hundred years passed and the pendulum tipped eastward: Alexander the Great began his "Drang nach Osten" to be succeeded by the Romans just a few centuries later. The Graeco-Roman expansion reached its limit under Trajan (98-117 AD). During the whole of the second century AD the Romans were trying to keep the limes intact, but after Marcus Aurelius their failure became evident.

Marcus Aurelius died in 180. In the following year in the far east of Eurasia the great Khan of the Sienpi quasi-empire Tangshihai also died. It was Sienpi who delivered a mortal blow to the great nomadic empire of the Hsiungnu (late third century BC—early second century AD) and by the middle of the second century AD made them flee to the Volga. A new expansion was about to start. In the third or early fourth century the Hsiungnu became into the Huns—a conglomerate of ethnically diverse peoples whose capital Gunnigard lay somewhere in the region of contemporary Kiev.

In the fourth century AD—just 700 years after the beginning of Alexander the Great's inroad into the East—the westward 'Folkwanderung' began. By the end of the fifth century AD it ruined the western part of the Roman Empire, and in the fifth-sixth centuries a brave new world of Barbarians emerged. That picture was completed by the Arabs and their conquests in the seventh-eighth centuries.

Another 700-800 years passed after the decline and fall of the western Roman Empire, before the pendulum swung eastward again—with the Crusades. Yet there are no literal repetitions in history. With the passage of time the picture was becoming more complicated and multi dimensional. It reflected the fact that the world was changing, and that something new was emerging. I mean that after the sixth Crusade (1228-1229) we see a new westward movement from Core Asia. In comparison the last two crusades associated with French king Louis the Saint look very pale—not only because they failed, but also because of a difference in scale, and historical consequences.

Eight hundred years or so after the Crusades and the Mongol incursions, a number of migrations took place first, from East to West (from Europe to America) in the late nineteenth—early twentieth centuries; and then from South (Africa)—to North (Europe) from the 1970s.

Hence, one can identify four major Eurasian cycles, from the twelfth to fourth centuries BC; from fourth BC to fourth/fifth AD; from fourth/fifth to twelfth/thirteenth AD; from twelfth/thirteenth to twentieth/twenty-first AD. In the middle of the fourth cycle, in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, the cyclic process grew beyond the old world to become global and acquired contradictory characteristics which make the whole development much more complex than it was hitherto (That is why the migration of late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries are of a different nature as compared to the previous ones. Yet they are part of the age old 800 year cycle).

There are several peculiarities with the Eurasian cycles. Each tilt of the pendulum is accompanied by pandemics—AIDS at the end of the twentieth century, plague in the fourteenth century ('black death' coming from Asia), and in the sixth-seventh centuries (coming from Eastern Africa); there is also some historical evidence for plague in the fourth-third centuries BC. Sometimes (most visibly in the sixth-seventh centuries AD) the pendulum swing was accompanied not only by pandemics but by climatic changes and instability as well.

However, the most interesting feature of the clock-work-like pendulum was what was happening halfway through each cycle at 800 years intervals.

Just in the middle of the first cycle (eighth-seventh centuries BC), the 'poleis' revolution took place in ancient Greece providing the basis for the new social system based on slavery. The first and second centuries AD (the middle of the second cycle) were represented by great spiritual and social revolutions in history—the rise ('the invention') of Christianity. At the same time the Roman Empire emerged and flourished under the Antonines. In the middle (c. 700 AD) of the third cycle we find the genesis of feudalism and the rise of Islam. In the Eurasian Far East we see the Great Turkic Khanate (a new nomadic empire) and the blossoming of China under the Tang dynasty.

The middle of the fourth cycle (around 1600) was historically the most productive. Western Europe experienced a great revolution (1517-1648); it bred forces that created capitalism and nation states; and because of this revolution Europe began to identify itself as 'the West'. Russia also experienced a revolution, 1517/65-1648 which brought about Russian autocracy—a power of a unique type distinct from both so-called occidental absolutism and so called oriental despotism.

During the same period throughout Eurasia great empires emerged—that of Charles V covering almost half of Europe; the Safavid realm in Iran; the Mughal empire in India; that of the Qing in China; the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan. Even the Ottoman Sultanate reached its peak then.

Both in the heartland and in the littoral belt, great changes were determined by developments in Core (Central) Asia inhabited by the nomads. This region played the central role in the history of Eurasia between the thirteenth century BC and the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries AD, when through the efforts of Russia and China, the central role, hitherto held by nomadic Core Asia, was assumed by the imperial sedentary heartland which as a whole historically became more important than the core. Yet the heartland or at least its largest part was taken over by Russia which to a great extent had been forged by the last great nomadic empire—the Mongols. Its emergence and development (especially its early phase, until the 1670s-1680s) can be 'viewed from a height' as the last bow of Eurasian nomadic civilisation and at the same time as its testament to Eurasia. The key feature of the last two centuries was the struggle between the global geopolitical logic as personified by Anglo-Saxon (Anglo-American) power and the Eurasian one (largely Russian).

Bearing all this in mind we should admit that the world of the fourth Eurasian cycle, or at least its basis was laid out by the Mongols as 'geohistorical engineers'. I would not go as far as saying that the world of the fourth cycle was the world the Mongols made. But paraphrasing Braudel I would say that the Mongols dealt the most important cards which directly and indirectly shaped the fate of Eurasia until the 'long sixteenth century' and to some extent that 'long' century itself. For a short time Chengis Khan and his heirs unified a large part of Eurasia (almost all the heartland). As a result of this unification 'black death' found its way to Europe and wiped out one third of its population (20 million men and women). This drastically changed the bargaining economic and social power of the peasants vis-à-vis the gentry and made the latter fight to defend their weakening positions. Their social engineering (the creation of 'new absolutist monarchies'), combined with the discovery of America (followed by an inflow of bullion) and the military revolution, led in the long run to capitalism and the creation of a world system of a new ('non-Mongol') type. This logical chain is indirect, because in the beginning capitalism was just one of the by-products of a complex historical process, fighting for a place in the sun against the other by-products (for example, against the Ancient Régime).

On the other hand, the influence of the Mongol conquests and of the Golden Horde system on Russia and Russian history was direct and led to the emergence of a social system which together with financial capital (and the nation-state) determined the fate of Eurasia and—in the twentieth century—that of the world.

The Power of the Mongols

The Mongols were the greatest and the last (Eurasian, not only Asian) steppe empire. They held sway over on area greater that any state before theirs. In the fifteen hundred years before the rise of the Mongols there existed seven large steppe empires. Among them the Hsiungnu and Turkic Khanates were really important. The western border of the Hsiungnu reached Baykal Lake, that of the Turkic Khanate went further westward—to the Caspian sea, and the Mongols pushed the frontier of the nomadic empire the farthest—to Eastern Europe, more precisely—encompassing the Russian plain and retaining control over it for more than two centuries.

In Asia the Mongol-Turkic nomads were not able to influence in depth the conquered sedentary population. The Chinese and the Iranians for thousand and more years had the historical experience of assimilating or even absorbing the nomads coming from the north, culturally, demographically and, last but not least, politically. The nomads used to borrow from the Chinese and Iranian centralised structures and practices. China and Iran were old and well established societies. As a result in Asia the nomadic empires' social and political influence was short lived; they had few chances to leave their cultural imprint in this part of the heartland.

The situation was quite different in Eastern Europe. The Russian principalities of the early twelve hundreds were not (using Marxist language) established class structures of any known type (for example, feudal). They were young societies in many respects—late barbarian ones. A large part of the population was armed and hence was not to be easily exploited. No Russian prince before the Mongol conquest had enough military power to control his people effectively and transform them into an exploited stratum in contrast to what had happened in China, India or Western Europe. And of course the Russians had no experience of centralised political structures. All this drastically changed with the coming of the Mongols and the transformation of Russian principalities into tributaries of the Golden Horde—one of the centralised successor states of the Great Mongol Empire.

With the military forces of the Horde, Russian princes for the first time in their history acquired the 'critical mass' of power they needed to control and exploit the population, primarily to collect tributes for the Horde.

The Horde system changed the balance of forces in the pre-Mongol 'power triangle'. The latter's three main actors were: the prince, the nobility, and the population. And just as almost everywhere else the weakest actors usually combined their forces to fight the strongest.

The Horde made the prince the strongest side of the triangle. Yet the union of the other two sides against him did not materialise. On the one hand the Horde was behind the prince and could overpower any coalition of that kind. On the other hand, and more importantly, both the nobility and the population had to support their prince against other princes in the struggle for the benefits within the Golden Horde system. The more support, the more chances to win. The result of the influence of the Golden Horde on Russian principalities and of their more or less successful adaptation to it was the forging of a unique type of power unparalleled either in the East or in the West.

Russian Autocracy

Indeed, the Russian princes' power tended to be the sole subject,contrary to Christianity's 'polysubjective' doctrine of individual freedom. The State was institutionally weak and relied mainly on the use of violence combined with the consent of the ruled. Though imperial power was practically, and since 1565 theoretically unlimited it was not always strong in fact but the only restraining influence had been the Horde's which was external and distant.

Thus, when Moscow freed itself from the Horde there were no bounds to the Kremlin's power. It took the great Russian princes (tzars after 1547) almost 90 years to abolish any possible internal challenges and by 1572 the embryo of Russian power shaped by the Horde acquired its autocratic form. By that time Russia had won the war for succession to the power of the Horde—it took over the other two main successors (Kazan and Astrakhan) and defeated the Crimean Tatar state. Hence, since the mid-sixteenth century we can speak about a de facto Russian empire.

Some scholars equate autocracy with Western absolutism, and others with oriental despotism. Both make a mistake. These two forms had much more in common with each other than with the Russian autocracy—both of them were limited types of power.

In India, China, or Japan, the power of the rajas, shahs, or huandis, tennos and shoguns was also limited—by ritual, tradition et al. If we take Western Europe, for example France which is considered to be a model of absolutist monarchy, we can see that apart from the throne there were some other bodies and groups as subjects which contained the power of the state. I am not even speaking about the law—absolutist monarchy was not above the law. Louis XIV wanted to change the rules of succession during the last two years of his life because he hated Philip of Orleans—the person who after his death was to become the Regent by law, but Louis who is said to have stated "I am the State" could not change the law. No Russian tzar of that time would have tolerated such a situation. Until 1797 the Russian autocrats did not establish or respect any order of succession.

Hence, Russian power, be it autocratic (the tzar) or communist (the party's general secretary) was above the law (and the church). It had extralegal character and that was to be its permanent feature.

Under autocracy the situation was clear. But what about the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CC of CPSU)? Was it legal—legal according to the Soviet civil code? At first the question seems absurd, for the CPSU and its CC ruled the USSR for seven decades. Yet did they rule it legally? Were they under or above the law? Was the CPSU a legal entity?

The question whether the CPSU was a legal entity or not was asked in 1992 during the court hearings of the CPSU case. According to the Soviet civil code any organisation could be considered an existing, legal person only if the state had authorised it.

The state authorised all existing organisations except one—the CPSU. Of course, one can say that the sixth article of the 1977 Constitution established the leading role of the CPSU. But no legal mechanism for that role was defined there; there was no word about the CC of the party in the Constitution; there was no act regarding the CPSU. Yet, the decisions of the party were proclaimed to be the main source of the Soviet law. So the CPSU and its CC were extralegal according to the Soviet civil code. In practice it implied inability of the CPSU to be a legal entity, to own property etc. And communist leaders understood it very well.

Let us take a look, for example, at a highly classified document 'On the urgent measures for the organisation of commercial and external economic activities'. It was sent to Gorbachev by his deputy Ivashko, secretary of the CC of the CPSU. It is dated August, 23, 1990, and its number is 15703. The document says: "the lessons of Eastern Europe show that not taking in time measures establishing party property. . .especially in the period of transition to the market is a great menace to the party [. . .] I propose creating an "invisible" party economy; only a selected number of people should have permission to participate in this work".

So with the CPSU still in power one Communist leader proposes to ano-ther communist leader to set up an 'invisible' (i.e. extralegal) party economy.

Now if we look at the present Russian Federation we shall see that not a word is said in the Constitution about the de facto main power structure—the Administration of the President.

Extralegality refers to the fact that power ('state') in Russia tended to be supreme. All other agencies could exist only as its emanation or functions. It is no surprise that in this system power itself (service) was much more important than property. Since the foundation of an 'all Russian state' at the end of the fifteenth century nobility was not achieved by ownership of land, but as a result of participation in government, for sharing power with the great prince (or tzar). Hence there was never a separatist feudal rebellion in Russian history.

There were several power structures in pre-revolutionary Russia, for example the Moscovian autocracy (the 1560s-1690s) and the St Petersburg autocracy (the 1700s-1850s). I am not sure we can regard post-reform Russia (from the 1860s to 1905/1917) as a special structure comparable with the Moscovian and St Petersburg autocracies (in fact it was a process of disintegration of the latter); yet it was a distinct period of Russian history and as such it can be compared with the previous ones.

Each period had its own dominant group. They were respectively the nobility (boyarstvo), the gentry (dvoryanstvo) and the functionaries or government officers. Let us compare these periods and these power groups. It was only in 1762 that the gentry was given the right not to serve the state; but due to the fact that only 20 per cent of the gentry between 1779 and 1861 were wealthy enough not to need employment, it remained largely a service-oriented class.

Each of these groups grew more numerous than the previous one. It means that the logic behind the development of Russian power as an 'autosubject' was to incorporate ever larger segments of the population. In terms of wealth and property we have quite a different picture: each rising group had less property than the previous one. It amounted to depropertisation of power. From this standpoint the October episode of 1917 is the final revolutionary act to abolish all remnants of property. In this light the Communist order in Russia and the Soviet period of Russian history do not amount to a deviation; they rather represent a logical phase in the development of the special power forged by the golden Horde, during which that system reached its purest form through an anticapitalist revolution.

Capitalism Versus Anti-Capitalism

At a first glance the victory of the Bolsheviks and the establishment of the communist order pulled Russia the farthest away from Europe. More than that, it brought back state power to its initial 'Horde stage'. But on closer inspection the situation is found not to be so linear—it is more complicated and in some respect quite the opposite. The Russian revolution, heralded under the banner of the European anticapitalist ideology of Marxism, carried out the political programme of the French Revolution. This programme was part and parcel of the geoculture of Enlightenment representing its revolutionary progressist project; another one was the evolutionary, liberal (mainly Anglo-Saxon, or Anglo-American) project.

In fact it was precisely the 'Eurasian' (or Core Asian) basis (and nature) of Russian power—its autosubjective, unlimited character, extralegality, supervoluntarism, its freedom from the population ('society') which enabled it to realise in practice the most extreme European political project—the hypersubject creating its hyperreality. Constantly demonstrating the triumph of the subject (agent, will) over the system (the population) Russian state power often presented itself as a 'super-European' subject, not being restrained by any European social system, civilisation or law. Hence apparent Europeanisation and modernisation here tended to strengthen rather than dilute the auto-subject character of Russian power.

According to the irony or logic (or both) of history, to achieve its real nature, that is to attain its purest form Russian power had to be transformed from below, in an anticapitalist revolutionary fashion.

Communism as a system of ideas had been in existence for almost 2300 years, at least since the cynics of ancient Greece. However as a social system, communism emerged and operated as anticapitalism. No communist system ever arose as a form of antifeudalism or 'antislavery'. Historically the communist order existed only as anticapitalism, or negative capitalism and it is no coincidence that the most propertyless power in Russian history assumed this negative capitalist form.

Capitalism is really a very specific social system which can be operated with a sign 'plus' and with a sign 'minus'. For the sake of analysis it is important to note here that this "negative form" could only be filled and manifested by such a historical (Eurasian heartland) subject as the Russian power. By removing all forms of property and not only capital, by creating capital with a 'minus' sign Russian power acquired its raw form: pure power as negative capital. Russian (Eurasian) power found western—North-Atlantic and worldwide capitalism as a means to bring about the abolition of property, including capital. World anticapitalism found the Russian power (in its pure form) as a means of self-realisation and came into being as a Eurasian phenomenon (first in Russia, then in Eastern Europe and China).

Let us note that this totalitarian power was forged by Core Asian peoples yet not in Core Asia, but in Eastern Europe, where it found a suitable home. After several centuries of development ("The mole of History is burrowing slowly" Marx used to say) this power turned into negative capitalism and went back east. Was Bukharin not close to the truth when he quipped that Stalin was a kind of Chengis Khan with a telegraph?

Russia had to transform herself from a Eurasian to a world power, from the Third Rome to the Third International, thus becoming a Eurasian power operating on the global level. Until then the only operative world system was capitalism on the Anglo-Saxon model; in 1917 it was faced with a rival—the Russian (Eurasian) anticapitalist regime, the real 'land' power rose against the maritime one. In fact Russia (especially in the form of the USSR) was the only non-maritime power which could put forward an alternative to the Anglo-Saxon system. But that system could not be merely continental. The problem is that Russia is not a continental power: it is the only transcontinental—Eurasian—power in the world, and hence the only one really able to challenge sea powers and to compete with them. In spite of that fact paradoxically in the world wars Russia (with insignificant exceptions) was allied with Anglo-Saxon sea states against continental ones, be it France or Germany. Why? Here we come to the problem of Russia's (and USSR's) participation in the world wars

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The Significance of the USSR for thw Global Balance of Power

There are several modes and typologies of wars in the capitalist system. If we sum them up will get the following picture. The question of hegemony in a capitalist system is solved in the course of and by means of world wars which usually last up to 30 years. The first or rather embryonic continental war was the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). Yet the first real world war can be said to have been the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). This was the first round of a struggle for global supremacy between Great Britain and France. The second one—the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars—took place in 1792-1815.

Within the borders of the capitalist system itself the main actors of the wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 (some historians combine them and call the period between 1914 and 1945 the "thirty years world war of the twentieth century") were the USA and Germany. In keeping with the 'thirty years' world wars scheme, the central conflict opposed a continental power and a sea power, the latter always being the winner-who-takes-all (as a rule with the help of the ex-hegemonic sea power i.e. Britain).

This scheme captures some important and interesting features of the struggle for hegemony in a capitalist system. But it almost completely ignores the zone outside the capitalist system and hence Russia/the USSR and its crucial role in the successive world wars.

It was Russia which defeated Friedrich II of Prussia in the seven years war; it was Russia which defeated Napoleon; it was Russia which forced Germany to keep the larger part of the continental bloc's armies on the eastern front in 1914-1916; it was the Soviet Union which defeated Hitler.

There is a triple paradox behind the wars for hegemony in the capitalist system. Firstly, since the Napoleonic wars the decisive battles of the European or North Atlantic wars were waged on the Russian theatre, as if non-Russian Europe did not have enough space for its wars to unfold. Secondly, the victory of sea power over the continental one was sealed because Russia/ USSR, herself also continental power, always fought on the side of the sea power. Thirdly, though not a part of the capitalist system Russia played a crucial military role in deciding who would be the hegemon in the capitalist system. Therefore, the fate of capitalism was critically influenced by a non-capitalist or even anticapitalist country, and the world's fate was spelt by the Eurasian heartland factor.

Why was Russia constantly on the Anglo-Saxon (Anglo-American) 'sea' side against French-German continental powers in the world wars? At the end of the world wars there was always a geostrategic conflict between Russia and her Anglo-Saxon ex-ally (Russian-British struggle of the 1850s-1907 and of the 1920s; Soviet-American struggle in 1943/45-1989/91). Why did the continentals (France and Russia in the early nineteenth century or Germany and USSR in the 1930s-40s) not join their forces in a kind of continental bloc (the dream of the great Eurasian Karl Haushofer) to ensure the 'geopolitical final solution' to the Anglo-Saxon problem? Several attempts were made in that direction (the failed union between tzar Paul I and Napoleon; the participation of Paul's son, Alexander I in the continental blockade against Great Britain; the union between Hitler and Stalin in 1939-1941), but they were short-lived.

At first sight the reason seems quite simple. One can assume that being a continental power herself and hence needing to trade with a sea power Russia had to come on the side of sea power. As a continental power uninvolved in the struggle for hegemony in the capitalist system Russia usually did not have major military conflicts with sea powers on the global level (at least until 1945). On the contrary Russia had territorial rivalries with other European continental powers.

This explanation is correct to some extent, but insufficient because it was not Russia, but European continentals which began the war. They attacked Russia, not vice versa. Here we come to the issue often ignored or overlooked especially by those geopoliticians who dream about the union of continental Russia with continental France or Germany. Russia is the only transcontinental power rimmed by three oceans. After setting up the transcontinental railway system it also became a supercontinental quasi-maritime power—it is no surprise that the prospect of Russian access to the Indian ocean is a longstanding nightmare for both the English and the Americans.

The transcontinental 'quantity' of space transformed itself into a geohistorical quality: no continental power, could pose a credible challenge to a trans (super, hyper) continental power whether it was Russia or the USSR. The union of any European continental major state with Russia was quite dangerous to the former: all other things being equal, Russia could overwhelm and absorb any continental neighbour. That fact was very well understood by both Napoleon and Hitler. The latter one in his 'Mein Kampf' wrote (with Russia on his mind) that Germany cannot tolerate the existence of another mighty continental state on its borders. At the end of the twentieth century a similar sentence applied not to Europe but to Eurasia as a whole, was written by Brzezinsky. He concluded that the USA should not brook any rival capable of dominating Eurasia and thus challenging them. Any neighbour of Russia or the USSR engaged in a war in the west did not feel comfortable with Russia in the East. That is why France and Germany both began their suicidal wars against Russia.

Only sea powers (to be more precise oceanic powers, which are hence supercontinental like Russia) could for decades oppose Russia (heartland Eurasia) though not always successfully. In a state against state, one to one, intercontinental feud, both Great Britain (in the 1920s) and the USA (by 1975) were defeated. The unified power of the West as a whole was needed to beat Russia/the USSR. The first such Pan-Western victory was achieved in the Crimean war (1853-1856), the first all-Western war against Russia; the second was won in 1989/1991 by the unified West (with New America at its heart—Globamerica). Only the globalised West could prove stronger than the USSR which additionally was by then in a state of deep systemic crisis.

From that point of view the Crimean war and the 'postclassical' (global) Cold War are special cases. In fact they are Western-Russian (North Atlantic-heartland Eurasian) wars. And, of course, in 1941-1945 and in 1945-1989/91 capitalist vs anticapitalist, sociosystemic dimensions and characteristics were added to these conflicts.

The USSR as a heartland Eurasian anticapitalist system objectively became a kind of shield for Eurasia as a whole—the shield against capitalism, against the Anglo-Saxon system. The very existence of the USSR, reinforced by her military, political and economic might, made it possible for many colonial and semicolonial countries to become free. I do not refer only to socialist revolutions in China or Vietnam, but also to the national liberation movements in Asia as a whole. The USSR not only set limits to imperialism, but enabled a small country like Vietnam to defeat the USA (which later took its revenge in Afghanistan). Now that the USSR is gone with the wind of history and after USA/NATO aggressions against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq we can better assess the significance of the USSR for Asian peoples. And not only for Asians, but also for Europeans.

In view of the existence of the USSR as the centre of the 'second world', the masters of 'the first world', the dominant capitalist core, had to pacify their middle and working classes through state—in fact socialist—redistribution. That dispensation was called the 'welfare state', and it was especially strong in such countries as West Germany and France. Even Anglo-Americans in 1945-1975 had to appease their middle and working classes. Now they no longer have to. The socialist bloc, which on the world scale was a kind of international middle working class, halfway between the rich bourgeois North and the 'poor', lower class South, paradoxically provided a kind of guarantee for the middle and working classes of the rich 'core nations'; thus Eurasia impinged on the Anglo-Saxon (North Atlantic) sphere. The 'Yalta world' hung in a precarious balance between capitalism and communism respectively enshrined in the USA and the USSR, between the North Atlantic area and the Eurasian heartland.

With the defeat of Nazi Germany the last chance of continental Europe to keep the Anglo-Saxon system at bay faded away. It is said that several months before his death Hitler claimed: "I was the last chance of Europe". In fact this chance had no chances: Hitler's Europe could not oppose the combination of time/capital of the Anglo-Saxon world with the space/power of the Eurasian empire. After the last world war in Europe there were only two significant actors—the USA (as the leader of the West) representing the Anglo-Saxon (oceanic) capitalist liberal model and the Soviet (Russian, Eurasian, transcontinental) anticapitalist communist model. These actors engaged in the first really global (not just world) war. By 1975 (Helsinki, Vietnam) the USSR defeated the USA in a classical ('state versus state', 'international bloc versus international bloc') Cold War. But the USSR was not prepared for post-classical Cold War where it had to confront the globalised western structures forged by the USA between 1945 and 1975 and which came to their rescue in the mid-70s. M Walker correctly stated that it was not exactly the USA that won the war but rather the global Frankenstein—the globalised financial economy, whose 'three whales' were the USA, Japan and Germany led by the trilateral agencies. The Soviet government, undermined by the arms race and the decline of oil prices was helpless (as any national government) in the face of the aforesaid global Frankenstein directed by multinational institutions together with the US government.

I am tempted to paraphrase Hitler and say: the "Soviet Union was the last hope of Eurasia". Yet something stops me. The USSR was the last hope in a sense for super state monolithic structures, because just as the great Mongol empire and Tzarist Russia (each of these 'successive' Eurasian powers growing larger) it unified much of Eurasia and, like Russia had opposed Great Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century, the USSR challenged the USA in the second half of the twentieth century. In the end however, Russia lost i.e. she disintegrated. Yet Great Britain was defeated by the USSR in the 1920s, like the USA was in the 1970s. Is the creation of a vast Eurasian empire then the only way to ensure a decent life for Eurasian peoples according to their traditional ways, by protecting them? Are there not some alternative strategies to secure that end? I do believe there are, and they do not consist in building an empire, but rather a union based on cooperation for mutual interests. That kind of Eurasian Union has not really been tried yet. Can such a 'pudding' be good? The proof as always is in the eating. But before eating one has to cook. Theory is always easier than practice but I am afraid that Eurasian peoples, states, and cultures have no other choice if they want to keep their own identities and traditions, if they want to live in what the Germans call Sicherheit (security), in one word if they want to stay Eurasians.