(East-West Question) Yang Cheng: Reconstructing the "scope of identity" in Europe? The Deep Cultural Structure of the Ukraine Crisis
China News Agency, Beijing, March 12th: Reconstructing the "scope of identity" in Europe?
The Deep Cultural Structure of the Ukraine Crisis
By Yang Cheng, Executive Dean of the Shanghai Institute for Global Governance and Regional Studies, Shanghai International Studies University
It is generally believed that Russia's current "special military operation" in Ukraine is a preventive diplomacy adopted by Russia based on the US and NATO's step-by-step eastward expansion after the end of the Cold War in disregard of Russia's security interests. The inevitable result of Russia's competition for "spheres of influence" has the characteristics of a two-way "shock-response", which is destined to be no matter what the outcome of the Ukraine crisis ends, Russia and the West will once again fall into a structural confrontation that is difficult to ease.
This interpretation of major power geopolitics based on a zero-sum game has its rationale, but the complexity of the Ukraine crisis is that it is not only reflected in the friction, conflict and confrontation between Russia and the United States and the West.
This is indeed a key element of the eight-year-long and eventual transition from proxy wars to the fraternal wall of two former Soviet republics, Russia and Ukraine, but it is by no means the whole of it.
On the contrary, Russia's historical view and the different ideas of national construction, state construction and regional construction between Russia and Ukraine after the disintegration of the Soviet Union may be the deep reasons for this tragedy.
On December 7, 2021, heavy snow fell in Moscow, the capital of Russia.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Tian Bing
In a lengthy televised speech after the February 21 signing of a presidential decree recognizing the "independence" of Donetsk and Luhansk, Putin systematically laid out his views on Ukraine.
In its narrative framework, the physical process of the disintegration of the Soviet Union had ended on December 25, 1991, when Gorbachev announced his resignation as the first and last president, but its psychological process was far from over. , which still profoundly affects Russia's complex relations with the former republics, including Ukraine.
As part of the "Soviet disintegration syndrome", Putin at this moment has abandoned the early assertion that "the establishment of the CIS was the result of the civilized divorce of the Soviet republics", and to some extent has returned to the historical destiny of the Soviet Union. key nodes and sites.
Because before the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus decided on December 8, 1991 as the founding members of the Soviet Union to sign the Belovedh Agreement, which declared that the Soviet Union ceased to exist as an international legal and geopolitical subject, Yeltsin was still repeatedly persuading Ukraine to agree to the agreement. Build a tri-Slavic alliance with it.
But Ukrainian President Kravchuk ultimately rejected Yeltsin's proposal, and as a result, the two countries entered a stage of long-term entanglement around "independence" and "unity", which eventually led to a profound crisis in 2014 and now.
No matter how you look at it, Ukraine has always occupied a unique role in the cognitive map of the Russian elite, a core element of its civilizational identity.
This is not only because Kievan Rus has always been regarded as the historical source of contemporary Russia, but more importantly, Russia's process of becoming an empire with significant influence on European affairs and its "movement" westward and obtaining the "voluntary participation" of Ukrainians on the left bank of the Dnieper "It's closely related.
Since then, Ukraine has been not only the point of connection between Russia and the West in the sense of space, but also the point of confluence of the two in the sense of time. sex”, that is, the difference in time between the modernization of Russia and Europe to obtain an important support for the status of a core power.
People at Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine, in March 2014.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Jia Jingfeng
As an important part of the Russian Empire and a republic of the Soviet Union, Ukraine plays both a connecting role and a dividing role in the interaction between Russia and the West; it brings it closer and alienates it; it creates conflict and promotes unity; To promote possible integration, there is a tendency for differentiation.
To a large extent, imperial consciousness, great power ambitions, and the idea of controlling Ukraine, a kinship ethnic group, have been the key to Russia's preservation of great power status, which has entered the subconscious of Russian elites.
Therefore, in Moscow's view, the self-identification of Ukraine and Russia is actually two sides of the same coin, each other's "internal other".
For Russia, Ukraine is not only a continuation of diplomacy or even internal affairs, but an integral part of the ongoing construction of Russian national identity based on a shared history, shared culture and shared memory.
In this sense, Russia's demands on Ukraine go beyond simple geopolitical logic.
It is not a direct projection of Russia, NATO and Russia-US relations in the Eurasian region, but to first obtain a "sphere of identity" that is different from a "sphere of influence".
Once recognized by Ukraine and the West, Russia will gain long-term benefits far from a variable "sphere of influence" within the framework of the great power game.
Therefore, the dispute between Russia and Ukraine over control and anti-control in the field of identity is, to a certain extent, at least as important as the geopolitical competition between Russia and the West.
Therefore, Andrei Tsigankov, a professor of international relations at the University of San Francisco, has repeatedly emphasized that Ukraine has become Putin's last bottom line because it is related to Russia's "civilized interests".
Because of this, Putin's stance on the Ukraine issue has a lot to do with changes in Russia's perception of Western civilization.
Since Peter the Great promoted modernization reforms centered on "Europeanization" in key areas, Russia has been learning from Europe for a long time and trying to catch up with the latter.
Catherine the Great, of German descent, proudly proclaimed Russia's European statehood to the world in 1767.
Red Square, Moscow, Russia, with the Kremlin to the west.
Photo by Zhao Wei issued by China News Agency
Although historically there is no shortage of indigenous forces that see Russia as an independent "cultural-historical type", they imagine Russia as a "middle world" and ultimately establish Russia as Eurasian in the process of the rise of Eurasianism.
But in general, becoming a core member of European civilization has always been Russia's assiduous goal.
Gorbachev actively advocated a "European common home" in the late Soviet Union, and Yeltsin also advocated "re-joining European civilization" for a time. Putin has repeatedly emphasized Russia's status as a European power during his first two presidential terms in power, and committed himself to Construct four unified spaces of Russian-European economy, freedom and legal system, external security and science and education.
It should be said that at this time, Russia has the idea of a "Greater Europe" that is embraced by Europe with the help of the European Union, in order to hedge against the security threat posed by NATO's eastward expansion to Russia, and to alleviate or even eliminate the contradiction between Russia and NATO by a common European identity.
The key turning point came in 2012.
Putin's return to the Kremlin by "transferring the king's car" with Medvedev is widely regarded by the United States and the West as a spiritual alienation between Russia and Europe, and thus constitutes a great challenge to the already insufficiently close cooperative relationship.
From the perspective of the United States, NATO and the European Union, the key to the West becoming the West is that it has experienced a high degree of identification with the creation of civilizations in ancient Greece and Rome, the ethics and eschatological revolutions of the Bible, the "Papal Revolution" of the 11th to 13th centuries, and the A major modern democratic revolution similar to the French Revolution with liberal democracy as its main connotation.
In this sense, Russia is an atypical West, even on the fringes of Western civilization.
The annexation of Crimea to Russia in 2014 has systematically changed the relationship between Russia and the West.
At this time, the path of building a "Greater Europe" from Lisbon to Vladivostok came to a dead end, and Moscow began to seek to reshape a "Greater Asia" from St. Petersburg to Shanghai, and finally locked in a return to Eurasianism. "Greater Eurasia" program.
It was after the Crimea crisis that elite Russian scholars intensified their criticism of the self-proclaimed normative power of the EU's preaching to Russia, arguing that the master-apprentice relationship between Europe and Russia no longer existed.
Vladivostok, the capital city of Primorsky Krai, Russia.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Sheng Jiapeng
In 2016, the United Kingdom began to leave the European Union, which has brought a huge impact on European integration, which was regarded as a model project in the post-Cold War era, and Russia's criticism of European civilization has also reached a climax.
At the annual meeting of the Valdai International Debate Club that year, Putin, in the dialogue with the participating foreign dignitaries and well-known scholars from various countries, implied that European (Western) civilization is dead, and only Russia, which believes in conservatism, can save Europe and the world.
So far, Russia's official view on Europe has quickly achieved a 180-degree turn since Putin took office.
In Putin's latest geographical imagination, Russia is the "real Europe", while the EU has become a "fake Europe", which sees Europe as the edge of the "Greater Eurasia" dominated by Russia.
The hasty U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 further cements Russia’s strategic judgment that the West is rapidly “decaying” amid a “general crisis of capitalism.”
Russia must seize the "window of opportunity" to smash the old system that is unfavorable to Russia across the European continent.
In other words, Moscow believes that taking back Ukraine is an important part of consolidating Russia's "civilized self-confidence", and it is also the only way to provide a cure for the terminally ill West.
However, it is not easy for Putin to seek to construct the "Russian world" that he has frequently mentioned in recent years based on the Russian-centric civilizational narrative.
Judging from the progress of the current Russian-Ukrainian war, the "sphere of identity" that Russia wants to achieve, under the impact of the core geopolitical proposition of "sphere of influence", at least presents great uncertainty.
If Ukraine fails to renounce its claim to Crimea and agree to become neutral, as Russia expects, can Russia use its civilizational identity to dissolve the Ukrainian independence that has grown stronger over the three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union?
The EU agreed to urgently review Ukraine's membership, putting the confrontation between the "European world" and the "Russian world" on the agenda again.
Is it possible for Russia to reconstruct the scope of European identity on the grounds that the EU threatens Russian security?
More importantly, Putin believes that Ukraine does not have the legitimacy of an independent state, and the source of his discourse system is actually the division between big and small Russia during the imperial Russia period.
This imagined community that transcends nationalism appears to Ukrainians precisely as an unequal power structure imposed on it.
Moreover, once it comes to the core proposition of distinguishing who is the master and who is the slave, Russia is not pursuing the idea of imperialism but nationalism.
This is why Putin needs to use the identity of the Russian and Ukrainian nations in the vast space of the empire to package their relationship with each other, but when it comes to issues such as Donetsk, Luhansk or Crimea, Putin retreats to defend the Russians. interests of nationalist positions.
For emerging independent states throughout the post-Soviet space, how to respond to Putin's efforts to establish a new "sphere of identity" has become very urgent.
(over)
About the Author:
Yang Cheng, professor and doctoral supervisor of Shanghai International Studies University, Executive Dean of Shanghai Institute of Global Governance and Regional Studies, Head of Interdisciplinary Country and Regional Studies at Shanghai International Studies University, New Eurasian Regional Innovation Base for Country Studies Director, National Ethnic Affairs Commission "Belt and Road" Country and Regional Research Base SCO and Trans-Eurasian Integration Center Director.
He is also the vice-chairman of the Shanghai Society of Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the executive director of the China-Russia Relations History Society, and the chief expert of the Heilongjiang University Sino-Russian Comprehensive Strategic Cooperation Provincial-Ministerial Collaborative Innovation Center.
Now he is an international editorial board member of five foreign academic journals.
He has published more than 60 papers in Chinese, English, Russian, French, German and Japanese.