Eurasianism

Eurasianism (Russian: Евразийство) originated among Russian émigré intellectuals in the 1920s, notably Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Pyotr Savitsky, and Georges Florovsky, whose 1921 collection Exodus to the East argued that Russia was neither European nor Asian but a unique civilizational space shaped by the steppe, Orthodox Christianity, and the legacy of the Mongol and Byzantine empires. The early movement rejected both Bolshevism and Western liberalism, emphasizing organic cultural unity over ethnic nationalism.

The doctrine was revived after 1991 as Neo-Eurasianism, most prominently by Aleksandr Dugin, whose 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics recast Eurasianism as a geopolitical program of resistance to U.S.-led "Atlanticism." Dugin's variant draws on Halford Mackinder's Heartland theory and Carl Schmitt's land/sea dichotomy, advocating a multipolar world order with a Moscow-led Eurasian bloc.

Key themes typically include:

• Civilizational distinctiveness: Russia as the core of a separate civilization rather than a peripheral European state.
• Multipolarity: rejection of a unipolar, U.S.-dominated international system.
• Integration of post-Soviet space: cultural and economic gravitation toward Moscow, sometimes cited as intellectual scaffolding for projects like the Eurasian Economic Union (established by treaty signed in Astana in 2014, in force 1 January 2015).
• Anti-liberalism: skepticism of Western individualism, secularism, and human-rights universalism.

Analysts debate how directly Eurasianist ideas shape Kremlin policy. Official rhetoric under Vladimir Putin has invoked civilizational and multipolar language, particularly after 2012, but scholars such as Marlene Laruelle caution against overstating Dugin's personal influence. Eurasianism also has parallels and competitors, including pan-Slavism, Russkiy Mir ("Russian World"), and Kazakh variants articulated by former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who proposed a Eurasian Union in a 1994 speech at Moscow State University.