Of all the European nations, France and Germany make up the hard core of the European Union; and, among the remaining nations, there are four with such a special personality that they deserve to be considered extravagant, and they are: the two Iberian nations (Spain and Portugal), the United Kingdom and Russia. Extravagant for having a characteristic that makes them unique and constitutes a feature shared by them: the projection to other large areas of the planet, clearly perceptible in the expansion of their languages. Thus, Spain and Portugal are projected into South America; the United Kingdom, in North America; and Russia, in the vast Asian area that dominates as far as Vladivostok. This results, among others, in a fundamental consequence: Russia is Europe. Geographically, there is continuity between Russia and the rest of Europe; culturally, the roots of Russian culture are Christian; and historically, it is intertwined with the rest of the Old Continent as much or more so than Spain.
It is also true, however, that the Russians have never been clear about their place in Europe. Since Peter the Great, at the beginning of the 18th century, Westernist Russians have seen Europe as an ideal of progress and enlightenment, seeking their approval and being seen as equals. And, on the contrary, the Slavic Russians promoted a nationalist reaction against the imitation of European culture, to overcome an inferiority complex causing feelings of envy and resentment towards the West. Slavophilia is a cultural desire, which ranges from the way of speaking to the way of living - in the Russian style -, topped off by a way of conceiving Russia's relationship with the world; which is summed up in the myth of a "Russian soul", perceptible from Dostoevsky to Solzhenitsyn, in which the selfish individualism of the West and the Russian collective spirit are opposed. According to Dostoevsky: “Russia is not only in Europe, but also in Asia. We must banish this slavish fear that Europe will call us Asian barbarians and say that we are more Asian than European: (…) In Europe we are Tatars, while in Asia we can be Europeans”.
Russian foreign policy has been Slavophile. Nicholas I wrote: "We cannot expect anything from the West other than bad intentions and a blind hatred that neither understands nor wants to understand". The tsar mixed, like others throughout history, the defense of national interests with the defense of religion; and thus, he made the Greek cause his own in the Holy Land, which brought him against the European powers in the Crimean War, with a fatal result for Russia, which increased hatred of the West. And, on the other hand, the enormous Russian expansion that began in the 18th century caused alarm among the European powers, which generated a strong fear of the "Russian threat".
On this basis, Orlando Figes writes that "as a Christian civilization located on the Eurasian steppe, Russia could look towards the West or towards the East. Since the beginning of the 18th century, it had looked towards Europe from its vantage point as the easternmost State on the continent. Together with the south of Spain, it could be said that it was part of the Inner East of Europe”. But the Bolshevik revolution (which moved the capital from Saint Petersburg, more European, to Moscow, more Russian) isolated Russia from Europe, both politically and culturally. And when the USSR fell because of its internal dynamics, no one managed to do things right to attract Russia to Europe, its natural place. "The West - writes Jorge Dezcallar - made the mistake of not being aware of the fact that in 1991 Communism and not Russia had been defeated, and consequently it did not have the intelligence to do what Congress did of Vienna in 1815: end Bonapartism, but respect France. (…) Russia has not only been left alone, but also has a siege mentality”. It no longer matters because of whose fault and for whose benefit it was done so badly. past water But the effects remain, and are and will be devastating for Europe and for Russia.
The war in Ukraine will be the end for the European Union and Russia as global political actors. Russia, decanted towards Asia, will become a pawn of China; and the European Union will continue to be an increasingly irrelevant satellite of the United States. It could have been different if the European Union and Russia had been true to themselves as the Europeans they are.
