Marlène Laruelle has produced a detailed survey of the “neo-Eurasianist” school of thought in post-Soviet Russia, building on her two earlier books, which traced the roots of today's Eurasianism to thinkers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In her new book, Laruelle meticulously examines three diverse strands of neo-Eurasianism in Russia—the first associated with the ethnologist Lev Gumilev (who died in 1992), the second associated with Aleksandr Panarin (who died in 2002), and the third linked with Aleksandr Dugin, who, unlike Gumilev and Panarin, has played a direct part in the political arena—and then discusses non-Russian forms of Eurasianism, including versions espoused in Tatarstan and some other Islamic regions of Russia as well as versions that have gained currency in Kazakhstan and Turkey.
Russian Eurasianism, lucidly translated from the French by Mischa Gabowitsch, features an initial chapter briefly recapitulating the discussion in Laruelle's first book on the birth of Eurasianism in the Russian émigré community in the 1920s and 1930s. Three long chapters on the writings of Gumilev, Panarin, and Dugin follow, as well as two additional chapters on the Islamic and Turkocentric forms of neo-Eurasianism. An introduction and a concluding chapter round out the book.
Laruelle's painstaking analyses of the major neo-Eurasianist writers constitute the heart of the book and are rich and illuminating. The different factions of neo-Eurasianism are so divergent—and are so often mutually antagonistic—that lumping them all under a single broad rubric may seem artificial. But in this respect, neo-Eurasianism is little different from other broad schools such as Marxism, realism, and institutionalism, all of which encompass widely divergent (and, in some cases, mutually incompatible) strands.
Even though the disparate types of neo-Eurasianism often seem to have very little in common, Laruelle argues that they converge on several key points, including 1) “a belief in the existence of cultural constraints that explain the deeper meaning of contemporary political events”; 2) a perception of “the cultural unity and common historical destiny of the Russians and the non-Russian peoples” in the former Soviet Union; 3) a sense that “the central geographical position” of the former USSR stretching across Europe and Asia “inevitably entails an imperial form of political organization”; and 4) a rhetorical commitment to “national diversity combined with a dismissal of real autonomy for the minorities,” and a profound hostility to Western influence and “‘Atlanticist’ domination” (pp. 203–4). The author describes these ideas as “a kind of cultural fundamentalism” and an “essentialist interpretation of the world” that “serves an undisguised political objective: to show that the Western model is not applicable to the post-Soviet countries because civilizations cannot adopt anything from the outside” (p. 12). Neo-Eurasianists of all types firmly reject liberal democracy and support authoritarian rule on the grounds that “culture constrains the liberty of the individual” and that all “individuals must respect the essence of their national group.”
Laruelle claims that “many aspects of [neo-Eurasianist] doctrine have largely succeeded in penetrating into Russian public life” (p. 7), but her use of the qualifier “largely” implies that the doctrine has thus far not penetrated into public life in Russia, at least not directly. She acknowledges that “it is doubtful that … Russian foreign policy really has much to do with Eurasianism” (p. 7) and then adds: “The idea of Russia as a ‘great power’ (derzhava), which is clearly becoming dominant in Russia today, is not strictly synonymous with Eurasianism either. In foreign policy, stating that Russian interests do not automatically coincide with those of the West—wanting to play a major role in international crises, for example, in the Middle East, at eye level with the United States, or supporting Serbia or Iran on certain issues—are not really expressions of Eurasianism” (p. 8).
On the domestic scene, too, Vladimir Putin's restoration of authoritarian practices in many areas of political life, Laruelle acknowledges, has not been driven by neo-Eurasianism. She points out that “neither [Boris] Yeltsin nor Putin has ever made Eurasianist statements in the sense of using a culturalist terminology” (p. 8)—something that was also true of Putin's October 2011 proposal for a “Eurasian Union” (mostly a customs union), which was presented in nonculturalist terms and came at the same time that Russia stepped up its efforts to join the World Trade Organization, which would be anathema to the neo-Eurasianists like Dugin. Laruelle also concedes that “the revival of a certain kind of nationalism and the elevation of a new patriotic ideology to the rank of official ideology” under Putin are “not the direct result of Neo-Eurasianism; nor [do these trends] confirm the success of [neo-Eurasianist] authors” (p. 8).
Given all of these admissions of neo-Eurasianism's failure to have a direct impact on Russian public life, one begins to wonder why Laruelle is devoting a whole book to the subject, coming on top of her two earlier books. She insists that even though “Eurasianism does not account directly for Russian foreign policy or the new patriotism, it is not a marginal phenomenon in any sense” (p. 9). She cites some scattered anecdotal evidence to show that neo-Eurasianism “is not a marginal phenomenon,” but she does not marshal the kind of systematic evidence that political scientists would want to see. She presents no data from field surveys or even a single opinion poll (much less a time series of polls asking the same questions every time) and cites no results from focus groups that would try to get at the kind of impact she evidently has in mind. The author claims that neo-Eurasianism “is contributing to the diffusion of a strictly ethnic and cultural justification for the feeling of failure prevalent in Russian society as a response to the upheavals of the 1990s” (p. 10), but she does not seek to provide any rigorous corroboration of this proposition.
At one point early in the book, Laruelle contends that “all theorists of Eurasianism in fact espouse a fervent Russian nationalism” (p. 5), but her subsequent discussion of the non-Russian types of neo-Eurasianism contravenes this assertion. She points out that the Tatar, Kazakh, and Turkish champions of the doctrine “often criticize the Russian Neo-Eurasianists for their Russocentrism or even imperialism and call their theories biased for failing to give full expression to Eurasia's multicultural character” (p. 207). The differences between the non-Russian and Russian brands of neo-Eurasianism, and the divergences within each strand of the doctrine, are so stark that it seems doubtful they can ever be reconciled.
This book is a cogent, well-informed, and thoroughly researched assessment of the dogmas and peculiar ideas put forth by the most prominent advocates of neo-Eurasianism. Scholars who want to know more about the various strands of this noxious Weltanschauung will find Russian Eurasianism a useful place to turn. Whether the book sheds any broader light on Russian politics is more questionable. If Laruelle had combined her textual exegeses and background discussions with the sorts of methods favored by political scientists, she would have allowed readers to gauge whether neo-Eurasianism—as distinct from other forms of Russian nationalism—has had, or will have, an appreciable direct impact on Russia's polity.
