Three Useful Perspectives on ‘Is Russia European?’ Debate

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 27 – Elise E. Schlect, a graduate student at Columbia’s Harriman Institute, provides three useful perspectives on the latest round of what seems to be the eternal and interminable debate on whether Russia is or can become a European country, perspectives that put in context more than just the Liberal Russia Foundation exchanges.

            First, Schlect says that while for Americans the debate about whether Russia is part of Europe or not is a question for geographers, for Russians, it is a profoundly political one and as such reflects political judgments that by their very nature remain subject to debate (liberal.ru/excurses/rossiya-ne-mozhet-stat-evropoj-no-kak-budut-razvivatsya-eyo-regiony-v-budushhem-eto-vopros).

            Thus, this debate will continue forever regardless of the direction Russia takes.

            Second, while Russia as a whole cannot be described as European in culture, there are parts of Russia that truly are. Thus, she suggests, the debate on Russia’s “Europeanness” or lack thereof should be shifted from the country as a whole to its various regions and reflect the enormous diversity of what is an enormous country.

            An American from Wisconsin who lives in New York city, Schlect is deeply aware of the differences among the regions of the United States; and her travels throughout Russia while a student at St. Petersburg have shown her that the variations in the regions of Russia are at least as profound if not more so.

            Consequently, making a judgment about the country as a whole on the basis of Moscow or worse, “English-speaking Moscow,” is thus to mistake a tree for the forest and fail to understand the situation.

            And third, Schlect says that the argument that Russia is European in a civilizational sense because of its “high Russian culture” fail to recognize two important limitations in their argument. On the one hand, the high culture they point to was ascendant only at the end of the imperial period and only among a small fraction of the population.

            The overwhelming majority of Russians rejected it then and reject it now even when they take pride in it.

            And on the other hand, even the most Europeanized part of the population of the final decades of Imperial Russia devoted itself exclusively to “high culture” but did not make a similar contribution to political and civic life. As a result, while it is true that the culture was European, the political system and the society never became such.

            An obvious example of this distinction, Schlect says, is that Europeans view politics as something they have a right to have a view one and whose practitioners are their representatives; but Russians overwhelmingly accept the idea that some one leader is in charge and makes all the decisions on his own and without continuing reference to the population.

            Until those things change, Russia won’t be a European country however “high” its culture is.