Putin’s Russia has Turned Away from Europe Even More than Stalin’s Did, Shelin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 8 – Vladimir Putin and his regime have turned away from Europe and European values more than any Russian ruler including Stalin and are in the process of destroying the pro-European stratum that had previously had existed as a counterweight to such a shift, Sergey Shelin says.

            This shift should not be “minimized,” the Rosbalt commentator says. “From the times of Peter I, who Europeanized the state by forced, there has existed without any gaps a stratum of people who recognized their attachment to European and then Western civilization” (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2022/03/08/1947605.html).

            “The critics of Westernization to a large extent were in one flow with its apologists,” Shelin continues. “Not only the Westernizers but also the Slavophiles of the 19^th century were people of European traditions. Some were inspired by the liberal ideas of the West while others by the romantic attachment to the land that came from there.”

            And consequently, today, “it is no accident that not only our contemporary ‘Westernizers’ but also many ‘Slavophiles’ are horrified by what is taking place.” But now because of the actions of the Kremlin, “this stratum of Russian Europeans is running out,” the commentator says.

            “Such a total rejection of European civilization did not occur even under Stalin.” The Soviet dictator even as he repressed “cosmopolitans” still presented his system as “a guiding star for European and in the first instance for the West.” And when his regime tried to ban the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, it backed down in the face of scientific objections.

            But under Putin, the situation has changed. The regime is issuing prohibition after prohibition; but the groups within Russian ready and willing to object and having some chance of succeeding are ever less capable of forcing the regime to bend and back down in the face of universal realities given that the Kremlin denies these exist.

            And that allows for the devastating conclusion that “for 300 years, with all its zigzags, the empire has not departed so far from Europe,” a disaster for Russia and a threat for the West.