Eurasianism Appropriate Ideology for Russian Dominance over Former Soviet Space, Bisengaliyev Says

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 20 – Eurasianism can provide the ideological guide to the formation of a Eurasian Union including “the former Soviet republics of Belarus, the Russian Federation, Kazakkhstan, Kyrgyzstan and eventually Ukraine,” Marat Bisengaliyev, a historian at the Platonov Philosophical Society, says.

            Indeed, these five former republics form the core of a Russian-speaking Eurasia and should be able over time to work out mutually agreeable principles of interaction, he argues. And their coming together thus represents the goals of the Eurasian movement both in the past and now (ng.ru/nauka/2021-12-21/15_8332_ideology.html).

            Unlike both tsarist and Soviet ideas both of which contained within themselves a willingness to follow European models, something that proved their undoing, he argues, Eurasianism defines Russia’s tasks more clearly as being in opposition to the West and thus is far more congruent with Kremlin policies.

            Bisangaliyev’s argument is important for two reasons. On the one hand and most obviously, it parries attacks on Eurasianism Kremlin loyalists have levelled against it in recent years. And on the other, more importantly, it is part and parcel of the debate in Moscow over just what the borders and meaning of a Russia-led Eurasia should be.

            More explicitly than earlier Eurasianist writers, Bisangaliyev make the areal of the Russian language the key defining feature of this union, thereby both making Russia, where the greatest numbers of Russian speakers live the most important player, and excluding many places that other Eurasianists have typically included as part of their world.