Eurasism

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Eurasism or Eurasianism (also Eurasianism , Russian евразийство Ewrasijstwo ) is a geopolitical ideology formulated by Russian emigrants in the 1920s . Eurasism claims that a "continent of Eurasia" dominated by Russia and located between Europe and Asia stands in fundamental contrast to the " Romano - Germanic " western world .

Development of Eurasism

History in the interwar period

Nikolaj Sergejewitsch Trubetskoj (ca.1920)

In 1921 a Russian émigré publishing house in the Bulgarian capital Sofia published an anthology entitled "Exodus nach Osten" ( Ischod k Wostoku ). It contained essays by the theologian Georgi Florowski , the geographer, economist and philosopher Pyotr Sawizki (1895–1968), the musicologist Pyotr Suwchinsky (1892–1985) and the philosopher and linguist Nikolaj Trubeckoj (1890–1938). In it, the authors developed a concept which they called "Eurasism" ( Evrasijstvo ).

Historian Georgi Vernadski was one of the group's theorists . The center of the movement shifted to Prague when Florowski and Sawizki received teaching assignments at the university there. The Eurasische Verlag was founded in Berlin, then the center of the publishing industry for Russian emigration. The literary scholar Dmitri Svyatopolk-Mirski also confessed to the movement . Savitsky described the writers Konstantin Fedin , Leonid Leonow and Alexander Jakowlew , who live in Soviet Russia, as writers in whose works the ideas of Eurasism were reflected, but not Boris Pilnjak , whose work after Gleb Struve did express Eurasian ideas.

Supporters of the movement planned to form an underground party to subvert state structures in the Soviet Union with the aim of overthrowing the Bolsheviks . But she was infiltrated by the Soviet secret service GPU . In 1926, Florowski broke away from the movement. In 1929 it split into an anti-Soviet and a pro-Soviet wing. Paris became the center of the “left Eurasians”, and they were joined by the writer Sergei Efron , the husband of the poet Marina Tsvetaeva . Several representatives of the left wing moved to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. During the Stalin Purge they were tried for their alleged membership in a " White Guard organization". Svyatopolk-Mirsky was killed in the gulag and Efron was shot.

ideology

The worldview of the Eurasians was based on the assertion that there was a third continent between Europe and Asia, "Eurasia" (which largely coincided with the former territory of the Russian Empire) and an insurmountable contrast between the Eurasian culture of the Russian Empire on the one hand and the "romano -germanic “civilization of Western Europe on the other hand.

"There is only one true contrast: the Romano-Europeans and the rest of the world, Europe and humanity."

- Nikolaj Sergejewitsch Trubezkoj : "Ewropa i Tschelowetschestvo" (Europe and humanity), 1920.

The heart of the theory is the “ space ”. Here the further assumption is that the peculiarity of each culture is based on its respective specifics of the territory. Applied to Russia, this means that Russia is a Eurasian culture that is in contrast to the European coastal culture and lives from the influence of the Asian side. Western European culture is by no means rejected, but is described as unsuitable for Russia; it is also in the process of decay. The Bolshevism is rejected as "obnoxious"; the excesses in the Russian civil war would have shown his “spiritual poverty” ( duchownoje uboschestwo ), but also let the “saving power of religion” emerge .

The aim of the Eurasians is the unification of the large Christian churches under the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church ; of Catholicism distorted the original idea of Christianity. The Jews should also be included, but the “Orthodox Jewish Church” would remain independent in its cult. A tsar should rule this “state of wisdom” to be created “in Christian love”, in which all nationalities would have equal rights. The Ukraine have to find their place in this Eurasian empire; the claim of Ukrainian nationalists to belong to Europe is historically unfounded. The most important neighbor of Eurasia is China . The appropriate form of economy is a further developed planned economy .

The Russian philosopher Fedor Stepun , who emigrated to Germany, pointed to parallels between Eurasism and Italian fascism .

In the Soviet Union , the geographer and Turkologist Lev Gumiljow developed the Eurasist ideology underground from the 1950s. Contrary to the Eurocentric doctrine of the Tatar - Mongolian yoke during the Mongol rule from 1240 to 1480, Gumiljow also represented the view of a culturally fruitful symbiosis of the Mongolian nomads with the East Slavic forest farmers. By including biological elements, Gumiljow distanced himself from the classic Eurasians. His idea of ​​restoring an alliance between the Slavs and the steppe peoples was only spread after perestroika and the dissolution of the USSR.

Neo-Eurasism

The Russian political philosopher and publicist Alexander Dugin has been advocating neo-Eurasism since the early 1990s. Classical Eurasism, however, is only one of the sources of Dugin's eclectic ideology, it links the more culturalist concept of Trubezkois and Sawizkis (which he only mentions in passing in his works and sometimes even incorrectly names) with elements of geopolitics of more recent, western influences. For example, he cites representatives of the Western European New Right such as Jean-François Thiriart and Alain de Benoist , the traditionalists René Guénon and Julius Evola , representatives of the Conservative Revolution such as Carl Schmitt and geopoliticians such as Karl Haushofer .

In contrast to the central thesis of classical Eurasism that there is a third continent “Eurasia” between Europe and Asia, Dugin understands “Eurasia” as Europe and Asia. Based on Thiriart's idea of ​​a Pax Eurasiatica , Dugin pleads for a Eurasian empire from Dublin to Vladivostok under the leadership of Russia, because, according to Dugin, "the true, geopolitically justified borders of Russia are at Cadiz and Dublin and Europe is destined to do so (.. .) to join the Soviet Union ”. Classic Eurasians and Neo-Eurasians like Dugin share the bipolar worldview that “Eurasia” is facing a main enemy. The difference is that classical Eurasians viewed "Romano-European Europe" as an opponent, whereas neo-Eurasians envision a struggle between hierarchically organized "Eurasian" land powers under the leadership of Russia and liberal "Atlantic" sea powers under the leadership of the United States. According to Dugin, Europe is being occupied by the Americans and Russia must take on the role of liberator. The success of "Eurasia" depends on the rebirth of the Russian people who are building empires. In Dugin's apocalyptic worldview, this centuries-old opposition between land and sea powers is heading towards a " final battle ".

In 2003, Dugin founded the "International Eurasier Movement" in Moscow. Their public actions include laying wreaths at Stalin's grave .

Reception outside of Russia

In Turkey , left-wing nationalist circles, such as Doğu Perinçek's Labor Party , have been receiving Eurasist ideas since the 1990s . You are also in contact with Dugin. The background to this is the fear that Turkey's integration into the EU and NATO will endanger the nation's sovereignty.

Micha Brumlik analyzes right-wing thinking that is currently on the rise in Europe, as the success of nationalist movements and right-wing populist parties shows. But the new right is based on a foundation of old thinking, because he sees the politicization of space within the framework of a “Eurasian” ideology as a central feature.

See also

literature

Publications by supporters of Eurasism or Neo-Eurasism

  • Nikolai Trubezkoy: Europe and humanity. With a foreword by Otto Hoetzsch . Drei Masken Verlag, Munich 1922.
  • Lev Nikolajewitsch Gumilev : Этногенез и биосфера Земли. (Ethnogenesis and the Earth's Biosphere), 1979
  • Lev Nikolayevich Gumiljow: Поиски вымышленного царства. (In search of an imaginary realm), 1970 [new edition 1992]
  • Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev : Древняя Русь и Великая степь. (Old Russia and the great steppe), 1989 [new edition 1992]
  • Dogu Perinçek: Avrasya Seçeneği. Türkiye için bağımsız dış politika. (The Alternative Eurasia: An Independent Foreign Policy for Turkey), İstanbul 1996

Monographs

  • Otto Böss: The teaching of the Eurasians. A contribution to the Russian history of ideas in the 20th century. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1961.
  • Alexander Höllwerth: The sacred Eurasian empire of Alexander Dugin. A discourse analysis on post-Soviet Russian right-wing extremism. Stuttgart 2007 (Soviet and post-Soviet Politics and Society; 59), ISBN 3-89821-813-9
  • Assen Ignatow: “Eurasism” and the search for a new Russian cultural identity: the revival of the “Evrazijstvo” myth. Cologne 1992 (reports of the Federal Institute for Eastern Studies; 15)
  • Marlène Laruelle: Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire. Johns Hopkins University Press 2008, ISBN 978-0-8018-9073-4
  • Stefan Wiederkehr: The Eurasian Movement. Science and Politics in Russian Emigration in the Interwar Period and in Post-Soviet Russia. Böhlau Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-33905-0

Contributions to anthologies

  • Bruno Naarden: 'I am a Genius but not more than that.' Lev Gumilëv (1912-1992), ethnogenesis, the Russian past and World History. in: Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe. NF 44 (1996), pp. 54-82
  • Mark J. Sedgwick: Neo-Eurasianism in Russia. Chapter in: Against the Modern World. Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-515297-2 , pp. 221-240

Articles in trade journals

  • Sergej Biryukov and Andrej Kovalenko: The Eurasian Idea. Eurasism as an ideology and variant of a geopolitical strategy . In: multipolar. Journal for Critical Security Research, 2/2017, pp. 47–58.
  • Boris Ishboldin: The Eurasian Movement, in: Russian Review, 5, Spring 1946, pp. 64–73
  • Marlène Laruelle: Lev Nikolaevic Gumilev (1912-1992): biologisme et eurasisme dans la pensée russe. in: Études slaves, 72 (2000), pp. 163-189
  • Leonid Luks : The “third way” of the “neo-Eurasian” magazine “Ėlementy” - back to the Third Reich? in: Studies in East European Thought 52, 2000, pp. 49-71
  • Sergei Panarin, Viktor Shnirelman: Lev Gumilev: his pretensions as a founder of ethnology and his Eurasian theorie. Inner Asia, 3, 2001, pp. 1-18
  • Nicholas V. Riazanovsky: The Emergence of Eurasianism. Californian Slavic Studies, 4, 1967, pp. 39-72
  • Anton Shekhovtsov, Andreas Umland: Is Aleksandr Dugin a Traditionalist? "Neo-Eurasianism" and Perennial Philosophy. Russian Review, 68, October 4, 2009, pp. 662-678
  • Sergey Karaganov : The new Cold War and the emerging Greater Eurasia. Journal of Eurasian Studies, 9, 2, July 2018, pp. 85 - 93 doi : 10.1016 / j.euras.2018.07.002

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gleb Struve: Russkaja literatura v izgnanii. Opyt istoričeskogo obzora zarubežnej literatury. Izdatel'stvo im. Čechova / Chekhov Publishing House, New York 1956, pp. 40ff.
  2. ↑ Stefan Wiederkehr: The Eurasian Movement. Science and Politics in Russian Emigration in the Interwar Period and in Post-Soviet Russia. Vienna 2007, p. 47.
  3. ^ Gleb Struve: Russkaja literatura v izgnanii. Opyt istoričeskogo obzora zarubežnej literatury. Izdatel'stvo im. Čechova / Chekhov Publishing House, New York 1956, p. 43.
  4. ↑ Stefan Wiederkehr: The Eurasian Movement. Science and Politics in Russian Emigration in the Interwar Period and in Post-Soviet Russia. Vienna 2007, pp. 46, 51–52.
  5. ^ Gleb Struve: Russkaja literatura v izgnanii. Opyt istoričeskogo obzora zarubežnej literatury. Izdatel'stvo im. Čechova / Chekhov Publishing House, New York 1956, p. 46f.
  6. ^ Gleb Struve: Russkaja literatura v izgnanii. Opyt istoričeskogo obzora zarubežnej literatury. Izdatel'stvo im. Čechova / Chekhov Publishing House, New York 1956, p. 45.
  7. ↑ Stefan Wiederkehr: The Eurasian Movement. Science and Politics in Russian Emigration in the Interwar Period and in Post-Soviet Russia. Vienna 2007, p. 187.
  8. ↑ Andreas Umland : “Neoeurasism” in Russian foreign policy thinking. ( Memento of the original from April 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.e-politik.de archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: e-politik.de , March 10, 2009
  9. ↑ a b Stefan Wiederkehr, "Continent Evrasija" - Classical Eurasism and geopolitics as interpreted by Alexander Dugin, in: Markus Kaiser (Ed.): In search of Eurasia. Politics, religion and everyday culture between Russia and Europe. Transcript, Bielefeld 2004, p. 127.
  10. ^ Trubetskoj: "Ewropa i tschelowetschestvo" (1920). In: Nasledije Tschingis-Chana (The legacy of Tschingis-Khan). Agraf, Moscow 1999, p. 90, quoted from Stefan Wiederkehr, "Continent Evrasija" - Classical Eurasism and geopolitics as interpreted by Alexander Dugin, in: Markus Kaiser (Ed.): In search of Eurasia. Politics, religion and everyday culture between Russia and Europe. Transcript, Bielefeld 2004, p. 128.
  11. ^ Gleb Struve: Russkaja literatura v izgnanii. Opyt istoričeskogo obzora zarubežnej literatury. Izdatel'stvo im. Čechova / Chekhov Publishing House, New York 1956, p. 42.
  12. ↑ Otto Böss: The teaching of the Eurasier. A contribution to the Russian history of ideas in the 20th century. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1961, pp. 72, 85-87, 98-104.
  13. ↑ Leonid Luks: Against the Western Danger, in: FAZ, May 26, 2015, p. 7
  14. ↑ Jean-Marie Chauvier: The rediscovery of Eurasia. in: Le Monde diplomatique , June 13, 2014.
  15. ↑ a b c Andreas Umland: Alexander Dugin, the Issue of Post-Soviet Fascism, and Russian Political Discourse Today . In: Russian Analystical Digest . 14, No. 7, 2007, pp. 2-5.
  16. ^ Mark J. Sedgwick: Neo-Eurasianism in Russia . In: Against the Modern World. Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century . Oxford University Press, New York 2004, ISBN 0-19-515297-2 , pp. 221-240 .
  17. ↑ Quoted in: Stefan Wiederkehr, "Continent Evrasija" - Classical Eurasism and geopolitics as interpreted by Alexander Dugins, in: Markus Kaiser (Ed.): On the search for Eurasia. Politics, religion and everyday culture between Russia and Europe. Transcript, Bielefeld 2004, ISBN 3-89942-131-0 , p. 128 f.
  18. ↑ a b Stefan Wiederkehr: "Continent Evrasija" - Classical Eurasism and geopolitics as read by Alexander Dugin. In Markus Kaiser (Ed.): In Search of Eurasia. Politics, religion and everyday culture between Russia and Europe. Transcript, Bielefeld 2004, ISBN 3-89942-131-0 , pp. 125-138 .
  19. ^ International Eurasian Movement
  20. ↑ Evrazijcy počtjat pamjat 'Iosifa Stalina evrazia.news.org, December 16, 2015.
  21. ↑ Mehmet Ulusoy: “Rusya, Dugin ve‚ Türkiye'nin Avrasyacılık stratejisi ” Aydınlık December 5, 2004, pp. 10-16
  22. ↑ Şener Üşumezsoy: "Türk Süperetnosu ekümeni ve thinya sistemi" ( Memento of the original from June 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in Türk Solu No. 127 February 19, 2007  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.turksolu.org
  23. ↑ Micha Brumlik: The old thinking of the new right , sheets for German and international politics , Berlin, March 2016, pp. 81–92 online