ABSTRACT

The idea of Eurasia is back! The concept had effectively disappeared in the Soviet Union, apart from within some narrow intellectual circles, but then made an astonishingly swift recovery as soon as the Soviet system collapsed. At first considered as little more than an esoteric idea advanced by marginalized elements of the traditionalist intelligentsia, Eurasia is now emerging both as a specific form of regional integration as well as the heart of a notion of autochthonous development of a significant proportion of the globe. This chapter will examine the resonance of the idea in contemporary Russia and assess the plans to give it institutional form. Many of the dilemmas facing Eurasian integration are common to regionalism in general, but there are some that are unique to the post-Soviet space. Contemporary ‘Eurasianism’ takes three forms: the attempt to give institutional form to an assumed economic and political community; ideational debates about development and Russia’s place in the world; and ideological assertions about civilizational identity and models of the future that are wider than Russia and fit into larger developments towards a multipolar world community. Some of these issues will be raised in this chapter, while others will be explored in other contributions. The key point is that pragmatic attempts to achieve a certain degree of Eurasian integration is embedded in much larger discourses, plans and narratives, and it is certainly far from easy to disentangle the various elements.