Europe is not an alien civilization to Putin. If the Russian world wins, the European family would likely offer a place – possibly the pride of place – to a new and better Russia, with its large population consisting of many ethnic groups. By incorporating Crimea, Russia has not left Europe but has re-entered it after 20 years of living in isolation.
Direct Line with Vladimir Putin is a rich source for geopolitical hermeneutics, or interpretation of linguistic and non-linguistic expression. This year the live Q&A session lasted four hours. The Russian president put forth his views of geopolitical realities in Europe, showing that he has a streamlined and balanced system of views that is dynamic and can be adjusted to suit the appearance of new realities.
Putin confirmed his belief that greater Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok is a united civilization, which is not what the Russian Ministry of Culture said in a recent document titled The Fundamentals of the State Cultural Policy: “Russia is not Europe.”
Unfortunately for me, some time ago I proposed dividing societies into those that are gravitating towards Russia and those who are striving for unity with Europe.
Putin indicated that he does not consider the European and Eurasian geopolitical vectors to be opposing each other. In a way, this could be the main message of this year’s Direct Line.
NATO’s continued advance towards Russian borders is certainly unacceptable primarily because NATO as a collective security body ignores Russia’s interests. I believe that many problems would vanish if Russia became part of NATO in some way.
Russia has been resisting the attempts to force super-liberal moral values on it. But the moral majority of Europe thinks likewise, although European politicians who heavily depend on Washington and Brussels refuse to heed its opinion. As Putin said about Germany, a country which he clearly loves, it’s difficult to talk to people who whisper even at home because they are afraid of American eavesdropping. However, he admitted that the political elite are unable to completely suppress the opinion of the majority, as evidenced by the election victory of Viktor Orban and his allies in Hungary and the general strengthening of rightwing groups in Europe.
Europe is not an alien civilization to Putin. It is a battlefield between liberal individualism, which is alien to Russia, and European traditionalism, which Russia accepts and which was dominated by Atlantic views until recently. The Russian world, about which Putin spoke at the end of Direct Line, is a community of people of different nationalities who speak Russian and have a common genetic code even though they live in different parts of the world, who are not afraid to die and have little regard for worldly comforts. This world can give Europe what it lacks – the courage to stand up against a foreign and culturally alien dictate.
Replying to journalists’ questions, Putin said that he knows and respects European leaders, that they are decent and highly professional people who are, unfortunately, bound by a deeply false ideological solidarity that is both anti-conservative and anti-Russian. European leaders cannot side with Russia in the Ukrainian dispute, even though the seemingly pro-European forces, which seem to dominate Ukraine, have broken the law many times in their striving for power and have made anti-Semitic statements.
Unlike their leaders, common Europeans wonder why the EU, which is creaking at the seams, should take in Ukraine, an economically broke and politically unstable state. They also view Putin as the most rational force in greater Europe from Lisbon to the Urals, which is free from both American control and the pressure of some unsolicited allies in the east.
The Russian world is coming to Europe so that European authorities will take heed of their electorate, about whom European bureaucrats who toe the US line have forgotten. Actually, few people knew what went on behind the closed doors of European offices until Edward Snowden made his explosive revelations.
Putin has also appealed to the liberal forces in Russia to do the same. Listen to the opinion of the majority and stop fighting it, he said, or at least don’t be surprised when the majority fights back.
At the same time, the composition of the audience and Putin’s words about the liberal media outlets showed that the offensive against dissenting opinions should stop and radical rhetoric, be it about Ukraine or the Dozhd independent television channel, is no longer welcome. Putin even said a few kind words about Barack Obama.
If I got the president right, we have entered an age of struggle for European identity and for winning back Europe and restructuring it as our common home. The pragmatic economic aspect, although important, is losing priority. Oil and gas will be used as new arguments in a much more important battle of minds and ideas.
If the Russian world wins, the European family would likely offer a place – possibly the pride of place – to a new and better Russia, with its large population consisting of many ethnic groups. If the Atlantic wins, we would live in a world described in the dystopian novels by Aldous Huxley and Anthony Burgess – a debilitated hedonistic society, one oblivious of the values of homeland, family and God.
By incorporating Crimea, Russia has not left Europe but has re-entered it after 20 years of living in isolation, separated from the continent by a wide berth. Internal opposition may be blaming the current situation on those who all these years spoke about Russia’s peculiarity, but Putin is celebrating Russia’s triumphal return to the European civilization not as an unwanted visitor, but in a way, as its future liberator.
This article was originally published in Russian in Известия newspaper
