The Place of Europe in Russian Foreign Policy

Abstract

Russians have always held ambivalent attitudes toward Europe. This is so, at least in part, for the obvious reason that their country traverses the two continents of Europe and Asia. Russia is a part of Europe but not wholly a European state. Such ambivalence has been reflected in debates throughout Russian history – between the Slavophiles and the westernizers during the nineteenth century and the Eurasianists and Atlanticists in the post-Soviet period. These debates relate to the problems of Russian identity and the country’s relative backwardness, and have obvious policy ramifications. They are complicated, moreover, by the difficulties of trying to define what it is to be European. There is insufficient space in this chapter to pursue this point (but see Chapter 1). Suffice it to say, that race, religion, history, culture are only ever partial explanations of what it means to be European; even the geographic borders of Europe are vague and contentious.