Dmitry A. Lanko, St. Petersburg State University, dimppa@hotmail.com
Irina S. Lantsova, St. Petersburg State University, islanko@mail.ru
Russian Orientalism and Foreign Policy Perception of Students in Russian Universities
Paper prepared for IPSA's RC21-29 International Expert Conference
“Comparative Study on the Role of Higher Education and Communication in the
Process of Political Socialization from Perspective of Globalization”
Xuzhou, Jiangsu, Chinese People’s Republic, September 18-20, 2013
Paper prepared with support of the
Academy of Korean Studies Research Project
Work in progress! This is a draft! Please do not quote without permission!
Abstract. Education has recently lost its marginal position among topics of
interest of political science and international relations scholars, Russia not being
an exception. Recent literature on Russian higher education in political science
and international relations highlighted the bias of corresponding curricula in
favor of teaching geopolitics, including Russian contribution to geopolitics,
Eurasianism. Without questioning that conclusion, this paper focuses on another
bias of Russian higher education in political science and international relations,
which is a result of popularity of Russian Orientalism among scholars. Though
some researchers claim that Russian Eurasianism and Russian Orientalism
mutually contribute to each other, this paper claims that in some important
aspects they contradict each other. Namely, while Russian Eurasianism opposes
Russia to the West, Russian Orientalism opposes Russia to the East. According
to Russian Orientalism, people of the Orient are different from Russians; in
particular, they understand cooperation in a different manner than Russians, thus
complicating cooperation with them. This paper suggests methodology for
testing the impact of Russian Orientalism on the perceptions of university
students of political science and international relations, including its impact on
their perceptions of the differences between them and the people of Orient in
terms of their understanding of cooperation.
Keywords: political science, international relations, higher education,
socialization, political culture, international political sociology, Russia,
Eurasianism, Orientalism, cooperation.
Introduction
Mueller, Martin (2011). Education and the Formation of Geopolitical Subjects. In:
International Political Sociology, vol. 5, no. 1 (March), pp. 1–17.
Maekinen, Sirke (2008). Russian Geopolitical Visions and Argumentation: Parties of
power, democratic and communist opposition on Chechnia and NATO, 1994-2003.
Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2008.
Atkinson, Carol (2010). Does Soft Power Matter? A Comparative Analysis of Student
Exchange Programs, 1980 – 2006. In: Foreign Policy Analysis, vol. 6, no. 1 (January), pp.
1-22.
Bertelsen, Rasmus G. (2012). Private Foreign-Affiliated Universities, the State and
Soft Power: The American University of Beirut and the American University in Cairo. In:
Foreign Policy Analysis, vol. 8, no. 3 (July), pp. 293-311.
Russia between East and West
It has become commonsense in Russia to say that the country is located between East
and West. Russia is not part of the West. Even Putin, who attempted, according to
O’Loughlin, O’Tuathail, and Kolossov (2004), a “risky westwards turn” in foreign policy
during his first term in office (2000-2004), has never perceived the country as part of the
West. To the contrary, he has frequently opposed Russia and the West in his public
statements, for example, when telling journalists that he had “informed his Western
counterpart [British Prime Minister Tony Blair] about the Russian stance concerning the
plans to deploy elements of the U.S. anti-missile defence system to Europe” (Putin 2000).
Putin views Russia and the West as two different places, though both being parts of a
greater place called “Wider Europe from Vancouver to Vladivostok”. Thus, for Putin
Europe is bigger than the West. To the contrary, Bush perceives the West as bigger than
Europe: for him, the U.S. and Europe are two different places, though both being parts of
the West, which can include Russia too.
Figure 2. Semiotic comparison of Putin’s and Bush’s beliefs about the relative
location of Russia, and the U.S., in relation to Europe, the West, and the Middle East
Figure 2 reflects the results of a comparative semiotic enquiry into Putin’s and Bush’s
beliefs about the location of Russia, the U.S., Europe, and the West. Though majority of
Russian elite believes that Russia is not a part of the West, there are two factions among
them, the Westerners and the Slavophiles, of which the former suggests rapprochement with
the West as the only beneficial foreign policy strategy, while the latter warns against such a
strategy. Those two factions have been present within Russian elite at least since early 19 th
century; for example, Hahn explains emergence of Eurasianism as an intellectual trend in
Russia with an attempt “to overcome the rift in the Russian intelligentsia between proreform Westerners and pro-tsarist Slavophiles” (Hahn 2007: 232), which took place already
in the 19th century. However, it has become more popular in Western literature on Russian
political thought to trace roots of Eurasianism into intellectual exercises of Russian émigrés,
who fled to Europe after the revolution of 1917.
For example, Laruelle (2007: 10) connects emergence of Eurasianism with their
publication in 1921 of the brochure, “Turn to the East”, or, as Beisswenger (2010: 368)
translates it, “Exodus to the East”. Under Eurasianism I mean the intellectual trend popular
among part of Russian elite, which is based on the assumption that Russia is located in a
special place named “Eurasia”, which is not only located between East and West, but also
bears its own specific properties. Those properties, in turn, explain most peculiarities of
political, social, and economic development of Russia, including its foreign policy priorities.
Intellectuals in the Soviet Union learned about Eurasianism in the late 1930s, mostly thanks
to Lev Gumilev, but it was almost completely forgotten again in the Cold War years. After
collapse of the Soviet Union, however, it became popular in Russia because “it fitted with
the reality of the eastwards movement of Russia’s borders and justified a focus on the
renewal of ties with the CIS states as well as Russia’s eastern neighbours” (Segupta 2009:
27).
Over time, Eurasianism gave birth to various theoretical insights connecting Russian
politics and society with its location between East and West. Two of them gained more
popularity than others. First, it is the tradition established by Gumilev in 1930s to perceive
Russia as a state located in Eurasia, which is the border area between the East and the West,
between Europe and Asia. Under special properties of Eurasia Gumilev meant a unique
combination of different properties of traditional European and Asian societies and patterns
of political conduct. Gumilev (2011) linked emergence of this unique combination of
European and Asian cultures with physical geographic characteristics of Eurasia, which he
described as “the Great Steppe”; “steppe” being the Russian word for the savannah-like type
of landscape that can be seen in Southern Russia, including part of Siberia, Kazakhstan and
Mongolia. Such landscape eased access into the area of conquerors from both East and West,
who brought in with them elements of their cultures adopted by Russians.
Second, in line with Tsymbursky’s (1993) reading of the texts by adepts of
Eurasianism, including by those of the late 20th century, it is the vision of Eurasia that bears
properties of neither East, nor West, but its own unique properties. The continent of Eurasia
does not consist of two great regions, as the name of the continent pushes to suggest,
namely of Europe and Asia, but of three great regions, namely of Europe, Asia, and the
Middle East, which is believed to be a separate region different from both Europe and Asia
in the beliefs of Western political leaders, including both Putin and Bush. Tsymbursky
claimed that adepts of Eurasianism viewed the continent of Eurasia as consisting of four
great regions, namely Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the fourth region consisting of
Russia and a few neighbouring countries, first of all, Kazakhstan, which does not have
another name for itself, but the name of the entire continent, Eurasia. It is not surprising thus
that Eurasianism is an intellectual tradition popular today not only in Russia, but also in
Kazakhstan.
Tsymbursky’s theory provides with ideological background for an isolationist Russian
foreign policy, but mainstream Russian intellectuals advocate for a greater role of Russia in
international politics, and not for isolationism. In doing so, they resort on the traditional
reading of Gumilev’s concept of Eurasia as the area, where properties of the West are
combined with properties of the East in a unique way. Russian intellectuals have diverse
opinion on what are typical Western and Eastern properties. Formation of their beliefs about
typical Western properties is highly dependent on presentations of them by Western leaders,
including Bush, who has frequently equated “Western world” to “free world” (cf. Bush
2004). Unlike the West, the East does not have leaders, who identify themselves as leaders
of the East entirely; thus, formation of the beliefs of Russian intellectuals concerning typical
Eastern properties is a product of domestic intellectual exercises, in which the intellectual
trend of Russian Orientalism plays an important role.
“East is a Delicate Matter”
In 1970 Soviet filmmaker Vladimir Motyl’ released his new film “The White Sun of
the Desert”, which was destined to become one of Russia’s most popular movies of all times.
Its plot was based on a true story that happened in Central Asia during the Russian civil war
in the early 1920s, when a local Muslim leader had to abandon his wives in order to save his
life. Long before proponents of gender approach to IR (cf. Agathangelou & Ling 2004)
noticed that the Bush administration was attempting to justify the Global War on Terror via
propagating the masculine images of American troops, who risked their lives to save
females in both the U.S. and overseas from terrorists that would kill innocent females in
order to stop spread of freedom, Soviet leaders were aware of such a method of justification
of wars. At least, witnesses claim that Soviet leader of that time Leonid Brezhnev loved the
movie. The movie speaks of a pro-Soviet fighter, who risks his life in order to protect a
group of females, while an anti-Soviet fighter is trying to kill them in order to secure his life
and material possessions.
Though the movie unconditionally justified one party in the Russian civil war, it
remained popular in Russia even after collapse of the Soviet Union and after reconciliation
between descendants of former civil war rivals took place. Statements by characters of the
movie became popular sayings. The most popular among them is probably the saying, “The
East is a delicate matter”, by which the main character explained to his younger assistant,
why it would not be wise to treat adversaries of Central Asian origin in the same way as he
had learned to treat adversaries of European origin. The saying reflects the cornerstone of
Russian Orientalism, which is an academic tradition of Asian, African and Middle Eastern
studies that departs from the assumption that there are very few things in common between
countries in those regions and Western countries, including, in their view, also Russia.
Despite the number of scholars involved in that kind of academic activity is small and
declining, some of their views are popular among Russian elite.
There has been a harsh debate both in Russia and outside of it on the extent, to which
Russian Orientalism bears the features that Said (1979) indicated as characteristic to the
British, French and American ways to observe the Middle East. While some scholars
attributed to Russian Orientalism the same features as Said attributed to British, French and
American Orientalism, including its serving the interests of Russian imperial policies (cf.
Jersild 2002), others attempted to distinguish the unique features making Russian
Orientalism different from corresponding academic traditions in the United Kingdom,
France, and the U.S. (cf. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye 2010). What makes Russian
Orientalism different from corresponding British, French, and American academic traditions
as described by Said, and what simultaneously provides background to claim that roots of
Russian Eurasianism go down into Russian Orientalism, is that Russian Orientalism has
always been developing in response to worsening relations between Russia and the West.
However, Russian Orientalism is similar to British Orientalism, because both
academic traditions oppose “us”, Western, to “them”, Eastern. Answering Varisco’s (2007 :
68) question, “at what point does European-looking Russia fade into the Eastern steppe?”,
Russian Orientalism declares everything within its focus of interest “Eastern”, and
everything else “Western”. Like the British academic tradition, Russian Orientalism
underlines differences between Russia and the East. Russian Orientalism is not coherent,
with the rivalry between the Moscow and the St. Petersburg schools, thus, it does not
provide with a coherent list of differences between East and West. At the same time, many
scholars working in the field of Russian Orientalism underline that the East and the West
are different in terms of their approach to cooperation. While for Western people, they claim,
cooperation is just one kind of interaction between parties, Eastern people treat calls for
cooperation as a sign of weakness and thus cooperation with them is difficult if at all
possible.
For example, Knight (2000: 87) writes that Vasily Grigor’ev, a distinguished Russian
scholar in the field of Orientalism, who served the Russian Empire as administrator in
turbulent borderlands around the city of Orenburg in 1852-1862, considered efforts to
establish cooperation between the Russian Empire and then independent Central Asian
khanates of Khiva, Kokand, and Bukhara as “futile... and even harmful to the extent that
they placed Russia in the position of weakness”. When dealing with Central Asian
monarchies, he advocated for military, not diplomatic solutions. That approach survived
into late 20th century. For example, Vasily Mikheev (1999), in 1999-2005 Deputy Director
of the Far East Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, suggests that while regional
integration in Europe proceeds according to the model of “open” regionalism, regional
integration in East Asia proceeds according to the model of “closed” regionalism, which
complicates participation of non-Asian nations in it.
On the one hand, conclusion by adepts of Russian Orientalism that Eastern people are
less cooperative than Western people, contradicts the conclusion by Nisbett that the ecology
of ancient China better favoured establishment of cooperation as an important value,
because it placed ordinary Chinese into “a complicated world of social constraints”, while
the ecology of ancient Greece favoured occupations, which required “relatively little
cooperation with others” (Nisbett, 2003: 34). On the other hand, at least when concerning
the Middle East, it correlates with sociological data, which compares attitudes in European
and in Arabic countries, and which witnesses that Europeans believe that other people are
trustworthy to a greater extent than Arabs do thus creating ground for cooperation. In
particular, in Norway and Sweden 65% and 60% of the respective populations agreed that
most people are trustworthy, while in Morocco, Jordan and Egypt only 23%, 28%, and 38%
share that confidence (Uslaner 2002: 231).
Conclusion
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Foreign Policy Analysis, vol. 8, no. 3 (July), pp. 293-311.