FOREIGN

AFFAIRS MARCH/APRIL 1999

Dreams of the Eurasian Heartland: The Reemergence

of Geopolitics

Charles Clover

Volume 78 Number 2

The contents of Foreign Affairs are copyrighted.

1999 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Dreams of the Eurasian Heartland
The Reemergence of Geopolitics
Charles Clover
Few modern ideologies are as whimsically
all-encompassing, as romantically obscure,
as intellectually sloppy, and as likely to
start a third world war as the theory
of geopolitics.
Popularized at the beginning of the
twentieth century by an eccentric British
geographer, Sir Halford Mackinder,
geopolitics posits that the earth will
forever be divided into two naturally
antagonistic spheres: land and sea. In this
model, the natural repository for global
land power is the Eurasian heartland
the territory of the former Russian
empire. Whoever controls the heart-
land, wrote Mackinder, will forever
seek to dominate the Eurasian land-
mass and ultimately the world.
Unsurprisingly, this theory of geopolitics
has not gone unnoticed in the heartland
itself. Today, in the shadow of the Kremlins
spires, geopolitical theory has a fast-
growing set of devotees. Many Russian
intellectuals, who once thought their
homelands victory over the world would
be the inevitable result of history, now pin
their hope for Russias return to greatness
on a theory that is, in a way, the opposite
Charles Clover is Kiev Bureau Chief for the Financial Times.
of dialectical materialism. Victory is now
to be found in geography, rather than
history; in space, rather than time.
A geopolitical theory called Eurasianism
has become the common focus of Russias
red-brown coalitionthe alliance of
ultra-left and ultra-right politicians who
together control close to half of the Duma
(Russias lower house of parliament) and
who grow stronger each day, as Russias
economic crisis radicalizes the countrys
long-suering population.
In its milder form, Eurasianism simply
stresses Russias uniqueness and argues
that Russia need not Westernize in order
to modernize. But in its hard-line version,
the movement envisions the Eurasian
heartland as the geographic launch pad
for a global anti-Western movement
whose goal is the ultimate expulsion of
Atlantic (read: American) inuence
from Eurasia.
Followers of this hard-line strain include
the leaders of the Communist Party, which
is by far the largest political organization
in Russia today. Gennadi Zyuganov, its
chairman, has just published a geopolitical
manifesto, The Geography of Victory, in
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 Charles Clover
which he abandons anything resembling political thought. Eurasianism, then,
traditional communist doctrine. We live in may be Russias fabled third way, a
an era where geopolitics is literally knock-compromise between left- and right-
ing at the door, and ignoring it would be wing extremesand yet far from the
not just a mistake, but a crime, writes center in its own right.
Zyuganov. The only time Marx surfaces If Eurasianism seems familiar, it is
in the book is in quotations meant to no coincidence. The theory is a direct
reveal that he too was a geopolitician. descendant of the Slavophile movement
Other radical political parties, such as of the nineteenth century, now retooled
Vladimir Zhirinovskys Liberal Democratic for the 21st. Cribbed from Mackinder
Party (the ldpr, which is neither liberal and born in 1921 with the publication of
nor democratic), have also climbed aboard historian Peter Savitskys Exodus to the
the geopolitics bandwagon. Their rantings East, Eurasianism seeks to establish
cannot be ignored; the ldpr dominates Russias unique identity as distinct from
the geopolitics committee in the Duma the West. Rather than emphasizing
and competes with the more liberal inter- the cultural union of all Slavs (as the
national aairs committee to be the houses Slavophiles did until the idea fell apart
voice on Russian foreign policy. amid the Polish uprisings of the 1860s),
Outside the legislature, Russias DefenseEurasianism looks south and east and
Ministry and military elite have also caughtdreams of fusing Eurasias Orthodox
Eurasian fever. Some commentators even and Muslim populations into one.
nd geopolitical sympathies in the policies Eurasianism entered the post-Soviet
of Russias enigmatic new prime minister, world through the pages of the opposition
Yevgeni Primakov. His policies t the newspaper Den (Day), which was created
in 1990 and changed its name to Zavtra
Eurasianist doctrine so neatly that it is hard
not to view Primakov as one of the move- (Tomorrow) after being closed by the
ments backersalthough he has never authorities in 1993. In the eight years
publicly stated his position on the theory. since, the editor, Aleksandr Prokhanov,
and his former deputy, Aleksandr
SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY Dugin, have turned Eurasianism into
The widespread success of Eurasianism a rallying point for Russias right- and
is thanks in part to its all-encompassing, left-wing malcontents.
hybrid character. In the skilled hands The Eurasianists transformed the
of its careful ideologues, Eurasianism contradictions between white [ultracon-
has succeeded in reconciling the often servative] and red on the basis of a broad
contradictory philosophies of communism, civilizational project, said Dugin in his
religious orthodoxy, and nationalist funda- oce across from Moscows Novodevechy
mentalism. Eurasianism therefore manages monastery. Nobody else except the
to be imperial without being nationalistic, Eurasianists presented such a project,
messianic without being overtly chau- which dates from the 1920s but is just as
vinistic. It has become an umbrella operative in the 1990s. The other tenden-
philosophy, absorbing all that is radical ciesthe Slavophiles, the Westerners,
in the bubbling cauldron of post-Soviet the left and right, red and whitethese

[10] fore ign affairs . Volume 78 No. 2

 from The Basics of Geopolitics, as redrawn by ib ohlsson for foreign affairs
are all exhausted, they are for nostal-
gists, like collecting stamps or old cars.
Since leaving Zavtra, Dugin has
become the editor of a journal called
Elements: Eurasian Survey and works as
an adviser to the Communist speaker of
the Russian Duma, Gennadi Seleznev.
He took center stage in the Eurasianist
movement with his 1997 book, The Basics
of Geopolitics: Russias Geopolitical Future,
which he wrote with the help of Russias
Military Academy of the General Sta.
The Basics of Geopolitics takes Mackinders
idea of the geopolitical opposition between
land powers and sea powers one step
further, positing that the two worlds are
not just governed by competing strategic
imperatives but are fundamentally
opposed to each other culturally. The
antagonism between land and sea, for
Dugin, parallels the East-West divide.
Land-based societies, he theorizes, are
attracted to absolute value systems and
tradition, while maritime societies are
inherently liberal.
fore ign affairs . March /April 1999
On the strategic front, Dugin suggests
that an anti-Western alliance of Russia,
Japan, Germany, and Iran, based on their
shared rejection of the West (ignoring the
fact that they are not all land-based), would
be capable of expelling American inuence
from the continent. Notwithstanding the
fact that such an alliance will seem utterly
implausible to Western readersas will
the counterfactual claim that Germany and
Japan are not Western countriessome
of Dugins suggestions appear to have an-
ticipated actual Russian policy vectors. For
instance, he recommends turning over the
disputed Kuril Islands to Japan as a step
toward building an alliance. It turns out
that during the autumn of 1998 just such an
idea was mooted to the Japanese. Dugins
ideas have also foreshadowed Yeltsins
calls for a Moscow-Berlin-Paris axis and
Primakovs initiatives toward Iran and
Iraq (which began while he was foreign
minister). The correlation between
Dugins ideas and those of the Russian
establishment is too stark to be ignored.
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 Charles Clover
BIG RED
While Dugin and Prokhanov have
emerged as Eurasianisms main ideologues,
the movements greatest practitioner is
Gennadi Zyuganov. Zyuganov has used
Eurasianism to reinvent the Communist
Party, and he has been fantastically suc-
cessful in doing so. By combining nation-
alism, religious orthodoxy, and Marxism,
Zyuganov has outanked nationalists to
win the radical vote on both sides of the
political spectrum. And his Communists
strength in the Duma is likely to grow
in the next elections as popular disgust
with mainstream politics drives voters
toward the extremes, both of which,
thanks to Zyuganovs strategy, now lead
back to the Communists.
Zyuganov has bridged the gap between
white and red in Russian society, rst
by linking Russias national idea to West and has become a mere source of
popular traditions and Russian Orthodox
Christianity and then by folding these
back into communism. In his 1995 book,
Za Gorizontom (Beyond the Horizon),
Zyuganov argues that the traditional
Russian idea of obshina (community)
and the Orthodox doctrine of sobornost
(communitarianism)both of which
endorse collective property ownership and
communal decision-makingreveal that
communism has actually been a theme in
Russian society throughout history.
Zyuganov the Eurasianist is not just a
Russian nationalist. He also models himself
a Bashkir nationalist, a Tatar nationalist,
and a erce defender of Kalmykian
Buddhism. Zyuganovs big idea is that
all traditional societies are profoundly
socialist ones. He has skillfully connected
ethnic nationalism with communist notions
of friendship between nationalities to sew
all Eurasian ethnic groups together into
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an antiliberal, anti-Western patchwork
of traditionalism and collectivism.
This strategy paid o in Zyuganovs
1996 presidential campaign. He won
handily in non-Russian districts, thanks
to his perceived support for self-determi-
nation and his opposition to the more
exclusionary Russian nationalism of
candidates such as Aleksandr Lebed.
If Za Gorizontom was Zyuganovs
attempt to link communism with Russian-
Eurasian traditions, his latest book, The
Geography of Victory, is an even more
ambitious attempt to correlate class
struggle with East-West conict. In this
book, Zyuganov spells out the incompat-
ibility of Western civilization and Russia.
Russia will never be bourgeois, argues
Zyuganov. He goes on to claim that
Russia has been subordinated by the
raw materialan unhappy predicament
he considers analogous to the fate of the
postcolonial East.
The root of the conict, for Zyuganov,
lies in the very character of Western
civilization. He accepts that the political
philosophy of the West is founded on the
Athenian notion of democracy but argues
that buried in this historical legacy is the
Athenian division of society into citizens
and slavesa notion to which few Western
democrats will admit. This split, according
to Zyuganov, is a fundamental tenet of
the Western world-view: the Golden
Billion of the worlds inhabitants living
in the West are free from obligation
toward the rest of humanity, and [the]
remainder usefully and justly play their
role of resource-supplying appendages,
reservoirs of toxic waste, and spaces for
placing ecologically harmful production.
 Dreams of the Eurasian Heartland
ALL EYES EAST
To ght the global class struggle, Zyuganov
warns, Russia must rst consolidate the
Orthodox world into a single bloc and
forge close ties with radical Islam. At
the end of the twentieth century it is
becoming more and more obvious that
the Islamic way is becoming the real
alternative to the hegemony of Western
civilization, he writes. Fundamentalism
is understood as a return to the centuries-
old national spiritual traditions, and can
lead to very positive results. It is the return
to moral norms of relationships between
people . . . keeping intact societys morals.
This xation on Russias relationship
with the East is typical of the Eurasianists.
While they are imperialists, they are not
traditional nationalists; in fact, most
Eurasianists try to distinguish themselves
from Russian nationalists by advocating
alliances with Russias Asian neighbors,
especially its Islamic ones. As Prokhanov
puts it, The Eurasian idea is an idea of
integration. Russian nationalism is the
opposite of Eurasianism; the two ideolo-
gies are entirely incompatible. A purely
ethnic [Russian] conception doesnt take
into account Tatarstan or the Caucasus.
Talk of the East inevitably brings one
back to Primakov, Russias ranking Arabist
and Asia hand turned prime minister.
OrientalismPrimakovs specialityis,
of course, a Western science, the study,
classication, and objectication of the
East, and its very existence in Russia has,
since the nineteenth century, helped to
convince many Russians of their essential
Westernness. But Orientalism, as practiced
in Russia, has always betrayed an ambiva-
lent relationship toward its subject and
an inherent tension with the West.
Many of Primakovs policies epitomize
fore ign affairs . March /April 1999
this ambiguity and neatly t the Eurasianist
program. Since the early 1990s, Primakov
has been the driving force behind Russias
deepening relations with the pariah states
of the Middle East, notably Iran and Iraq.
Indeed, much of Zyuganovs The Geography
of Victory could have been taken verbatim
from Primakovs 1983 book, The East After
the Collapse of the Colonial System. In it,
Primakov describes how the imperialist
West tries to control the postcolonial East
through asymmetrical independence,
and he arms the Soviet Unions historical
role as the guardian of the East. Sixteen
years after its publication, meanwhile,
many in Russia now clearly view the
country as an honorary member of the
oppressed East.
Today, Eurasianism is coming softly,
Dugin relates. Primakovs policy is
Eurasianist policy. This is left-wing
economic policies at home, helping Arab
states abroad, orientation toward the
East, helping traditional friends like
Serbia, strengthening the integration
of the former Soviet Union. This is
Eurasianism, the policy of the heartland.
This is the third way, and may well repre-
sent the future of Russian foreign policy.
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