The
time is now ripe for Russia
to become part of Europe
By JONATHAN
POWER
November 16, 2001
London - Can the spirit of the successful achievement
of the Putin-Bush meeting now be carried over into
Russia's relationship with Europe? In many ways it is
easier for the U.S. to make a big peace with Russia than
it is for Europe. There has never been any territorial
issue between the two, apart from the quiet selling of
Alaska to the U.S. in 1867.
Despite all the tension of the Cold War it remains
true that neither Russia nor the U.S. lost a soldier to
the other side in combat. Yet for Europe the memories of
war with Russia and Russian occupation run deep. Is it at
last possible, ten years after the fall of communism, for
contemporary Europe to finally respond to Mikhail
Gorbachev's plea to build a "common European house"?
This is Europe's call. America will want to be privy
to the content of the discussions, but Washington knows
that in this case what Europe decides it wants it cannot
obstruct. Nor does it have any real reason to
interfere.
There is now urgency in the matter. The European Union
made it clear this week that most of the eastern European
countries, not long ago stalwart allies of Moscow, are on
track for integration into the European Union by 2004.
The larger ones are already members of Nato and Russia
seems to be downplaying its opposition to future
membership of the smaller nations on its Baltic
border.
Is Russia a European or Asiatic nation? It is a
question that has been debated for 500 years at least.
The nineteenth century Slavophile, Nikolay Danilevskiy
argued that Russia possesses an instinctive Slavic
civilisation of its own- midway between Europe and Asia.
Yet Dostoevsky speaking at a meeting at the unveiling of
a statute to the poet Pushkin said, "Peoples of Europe,
they don't know how dear to us they are." If this is the
predominant mood among Russian intellectuals today they
still have to contend with the nationalism - and Slavism
- of the rump Communist party and those powerful voices
in the army, and even the foreign ministry, who fear a
loss of independence if Russia is swallowed up in a
greater Europe.
Seventy years of totalitarian communism, following on
the autocracy of the tsars, as Norman Davies writes in
his monumental history of Europe "has built huge mental
as well as physical curtains across Europe." It was
Churchill who called the Bolsheviks "a baboonery",
steeped in the deadly traditions of Attila and Genghis
Khan. Yet Lenin and his circle assumed that one day they
would join up with revolutionaries in the advanced
capitalist countries. The Comintern in the early 1920s
discussed the idea of a United States of Europe. It
wasn't the Bolsheviks but Stalin who pointed Russia
eastwards.
In today's liberated Russia the European heart beats
fast. The roots go deep. Muscovy has been an integral
part of Christendom since the tenth century. In the late
imperial era it was not just Dostoevsky and Pushkin who
wrote in the European tradition, but Lermontov, Tolstoy
and Chekhov, giants then whom the passage of time has not
demoted. Russian music, so eminently of European
pedigree, with Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and
Rimsky-Korsakov rivalled anything that came out of
nineteenth century Germany, Austria and Italy. The Ballet
Russe and the Stanislavsky Theatre School were the
leaders in Europe. Even Stalin chose not to squash this
inheritance, although he sought to control its legacy and
energy in his own ruthless manner.
Russia has now found with America that it has been
able to fashion a common alliance- against terrorism, for
nuclear disarmament, against nuclear proliferation to
unstable countries and perhaps even the quiet,
unprovocative containment of the growing might of China.
The agenda with Europe is more demanding, but its rewards
will be much more long-lasting.
If discussions on the future membership of Russia in
the European Union began now it would take at least ten
years and probably twenty to bring to the point of
consummation. Russia still has too much corruption,
misadministration, and lack of widespread
democratisation, not to mention seriously inadequate
legal institutions for it to be a quick process. But, as
with Turkey today, the carrot of future entry can prove
to be a good stick for beating the system into shape.
Europe itself has to decide how much it wants this. It
has within its power the opportunity to anchor Russia
firmly within Europe, to cut off for all time the Russian
temptation to look eastward. Without Russia welcome in
Europe it leaves the Russian psyche dangerously exposed-
insecure, exiled from its natural centre of gravity and
horribly free to roll around the deck like the proverbial
loose cannon.
Yet for some Europeans there will be a price that goes
beyond the usual debate on subsidies and the cost of the
development of backward regions. It is to give up the
vision of a united federal Europe, under one parliament
and one president. Already with the planned admission of
eastern Europe and Turkey the EU is getting too large for
such a grandiose idea. With Russia a member, clearly it
could not work. Yet Europe would still gain more than it
ever dared aspire to - the continent-wide union of its
members and the stabilization of this great centre of
civilization that has spent too much of its history at
war with itself.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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