28 April 2026
1. IS RUSSIA IN ITS HEART STILL EUROPEAN?
SUMMARY
Russia’s roots are unmistakably European. From the river traders of the Kievan Rus linking the Baltic to Byzantium, to the conversion to Orthodox Christianity in 988 under Vladimir the Great, the foundations were laid firmly within the European world.
Even the Mongol period did not break that trajectory. Moscow rose in power under the Golden Horde, but the civilisational orientation remained westward. That choice became explicit under Peter the Great, who built Saint Petersburg facing the Baltic and embedded Russia into European culture and diplomacy.
For centuries, Russia was not outside Europe but one of its major poles - sometimes rival, often uneasy, but undeniably part of the same system.
The real question today is not whether Russia is European, but whether Europe and Russia still recognise each other as belonging to the same civilisation.
- Civilisation - a shared system of culture, religion, and political organisation
- Pole - a major centre of power within a wider system
2. Origins – Kievan Rus And The European Frame
Until 2022 - and certainly before 2014 - Russia had largely seen itself as part of Europe. That instinct runs deep in its history. It goes back to the origins of the Kievan Rus, founded by Scandinavian traders and warriors, often linked to Sweden, who sailed down the great river systems and established Kyiv as a trading post between the North and the Byzantine and Islamic worlds.
“Rus” is usually associated with these groups, sometimes linked to rowing crews, "rus" might best translate as "oar", though the exact meaning is debated. What matters is the direction of travel. From the beginning, this was a civilisation plugged into European and Mediterranean trade networks, not an isolated eastern outpost.
- Kievan Rus - early medieval state linking Northern Europe with Byzantium and the Islamic world
- Varangians - Scandinavian traders and warriors active in Eastern Europe
3. Christianity - A Strategic And Civilisational Choice
The Rus converted to Christianity in 988 under Vladimir the Great, drawing from the Byzantine Empire and therefore the Eastern Orthodox Church. This was not just a spiritual step but a strategic one. It brought legitimacy to a Moscow elite ruling over ethnically diverse lands, it strengthened trade links, and it aligned the state with a powerful and sophisticated civilisation.
As with the Roman Empire before it, adopting Christianity helped unify different ethnicities and cultures into a common defining order - that sacralised political authority, that established a shared moral code, that gave the state a sense of providential mission. It also placed Rus firmly within the wider European world, albeit on its eastern, Orthodox side rather than the Latin Catholic western wing.
- Orthodox Christianity - Eastern branch of Christianity rooted in Byzantium
- Sacralised authority - political power presented as divinely sanctioned
- Providential mission - belief in a purpose guided by divine will
4. The Mongol Period – A Shift In Power, Not Identity
I’m not entirely sure how deep the Mongol influence ran, but under the Golden Horde (descendants of Genghis Khan), the princes of Moscow were granted authority to collect taxes on behalf of the Mongol rulers. They used this position to build wealth and authority, and little by little Moscow emerged as the dominant centre of the Russian lands.
Some historians argue that this period of Mongolian rule shaped Russia’s later centralised and autocratic tendencies. Others see continuity with earlier European patterns. The evidence allows both readings. What can be said is that although the Mongols were militarily strong, they were culturally limited, leaving a vacuum in which the Russian state continued to look outward for its identity.
- Golden Horde - Mongol polity that dominated Russian lands in the medieval period
- Centralisation - concentration of power in a single authority
5. Medieval Europe – Integration With A Difference
In medieval times, Rus elites intermarried with European royal families and participated in a shared aristocratic culture. They were clearly part of Europe, even if not of Latin Christendom. Politically and religiously they belonged to the Greek and Eastern Orthodox world, which gave them a slightly different trajectory.
There is a long-standing argument that this eastern outlook explains later authoritarian tendencies. Another view, associated with Emmanuel Todd, is that political culture grows more from family structures and social organisation, bottom up, rather than from religion or elite preferences alone. On that reading, Russia is not unique, and comparisons with countries like Germany are not out of place.
- Aristocratic culture - shared elite customs across European ruling classes
- Political culture - shared assumptions about power: West - liberty, rule of law, pluralism; Russia - order, authority, state primacy
6. Westernisation – A Conscious Turn Towards Europe
Then came a decisive moment with Peter the Great. By building Saint Petersburg facing the Baltic, he made what can only be described as a civilisational choice. Russia would look west.
From that point on, the direction is unmistakable. Western technology was imported, elites adopted Western dress and customs, and by the 19th century Russian high society spoke French, the lingua franca of diplomacy, and moved fully within European cultural and political life.
Western Europe was the benchmark. Even those who argued that Russia was something separate, something Slavic, were arguing against that benchmark, which rather proves the point.
- Westernisation - adoption of Western European culture and institutions
- Lingua franca - common language used for communication between elites French from roughly seventeenth to early twentieth centuries, pre-World War One.
7. Enlightenment – Adoption Without Transformation
Russia did experience the Enlightenment, but in a distinct form. Under rulers such as Catherine the Great, ideas from Western Europe were consciously imported, promoting education, science, and administrative reform, and engaging with thinkers such as Voltaire. Yet unlike in France or Britain, where Enlightenment thought challenged and ultimately reshaped political authority, in Russia it was absorbed into the existing system of rule.
The result was not liberalisation but a form of enlightened absolutism, in which reason and modernisation strengthened rather than constrained the state. This is where Russia’s European identity becomes more complex - European in culture and intellect, but distinct in political form, with power remaining centralised, authority personalised, and the state prevailing over society.
- Enlightenment - movement emphasising reason, science, and critical thought
- Enlightened absolutism - use of Enlightenment ideas within an absolute monarchy
8. Rivalry Does Not Mean Exclusion
There followed a long period in which Russia was considered by, in particular, the United Kingdom to be its principal rival. Yet rivalry is not exclusion. On the contrary, it confirms Russia’s place within the European system of great powers.
Even after the Soviet Revolution, Russia did not somehow leave Europe intellectually. It remained part of a European tradition of political thought and industrial modernity. After all, Karl Marx was himself a European thinker, and his ideas - that history is driven by class struggle, that capitalism contains the seeds of its own collapse, that the state is an instrument of class power - shaped Russia profoundly.
- Great Power - a state with major influence in international affairs - is Iran today a fourth great power?
- Class struggle - conflict between social groups with different economic interests
9. The Modern Break – Competing Readings
The more recent period is where interpretations begin to diverge quite sharply. The post-Cold War “unipolar moment”, particularly under Bill Clinton, marks a phase in which the West expanded its institutional reach, with key steps in the Bucharest Summit of 2008 and especially 2014, when Kyiv began shelling the Donbas and, in response, Russia took back Crimea.
After a turbulent 1990s, the early Putin period saw overtures towards integration with the West, including discussions around NATO and closer ties with the EU. There is disagreement over how feasible these were, and whether the subsequent breakdown was driven more by Western expansion or by Russia’s own strategic choices, given that NATO and the EU claim democratic governance, legal alignment, human rights protections, and shared security frameworks that Russia was not seen to share.
- Unipolar moment - period of dominance by a single global power, term coined by Charles Krauthammer in 1990
- Near abroad - former Soviet states seen as strategically important
- Legal alignment - compatibility of laws and institutions across member states
- Security framework - shared military and defence arrangements between states
- Human rights - claims about how individuals should be treated by authority, especially in personal freedoms, legal protection, and political participation.
10. Power, Strategy And The Question Of Exclusion
A longer pattern can be observed in which Britain first, and later the United States, acted in ways that had the effect of pushing Russia towards the margins of Europe and finally out. Thinkers such as Halford Mackinder framed Eurasia as the key to global power, with his “pivot of history” describing a buffer zone from the Baltic to the Black Sea separating sea and land powers.
Whether this amounts to a deliberate exclusion of Russia, or whether Russia’s own behaviour produced that outcome, remains a matter of interpretation, with one side pointing to NATO expansion, institutional gatekeeping, and geopolitical containment; and the other to centralised power, limited pluralism, and divergence from Western legal and political norms..
- Heartland - central Eurasian landmass seen as the key to global power
- Buffer zone - region separating rival powers
11. Putin And The European Idea
It is also worth recalling that Vladimir Putin, particularly early in his presidency, did signal an interest in closer integration with Europe, including discussions around NATO and economic alignment with the EU.
It is argued that NATO expansion and support for colour revolutions created security pressures that led Russia to draw a line at Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014.
- NATO - Western military alliance formed in 1949
- Colour revolutions - political movements seeking regime change in post-Soviet states
- Geopolitical containment - strategy to limit the influence of a rival power
- Pluralism - presence of multiple competing political interests. Though sometimes this is a bounded pluralism where the people are governed by the uniparty.
12. A Civilisation In Question
So historically, Russia has not been an outsider to Europe. It has been one of its major poles, sometimes aligned, sometimes in rivalry, but always part of the same broad civilisational space.
The real question now is not whether Russia is European. It is whether Western Europe and Russia still recognise each other as belonging to the same civilisation at all, where the boundary between West and East now lies and weather cooperation is possible on matters of great importance to the planet, such as climate stability, nuclear security, and global energy supply.
- Civilisational space - shared sphere of cultural and historical identity
- Climate stability - maintaining a balanced global climate system
- Nuclear security - control and prevention of nuclear weapons use or proliferation
- Energy supply - availability and flow of essential energy resources
13. Reorientation East
Against that backdrop, Russia has been pushed into a gradual rebalancing towards the East. Strategic alignment with China has deepened across energy, finance, and security, while frameworks such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation have taken on greater importance.
At the same time, Russia’s role in West Asia has expanded, from Syria to Iran and the Gulf. The result is a geopolitical posture that looks increasingly Eurasian rather than European - less a natural destination than a strategic adjustment to shifting pressures and constraints.
- Eurasian - relating to the combined European and Asian landmass
- Geopolitics - interaction between geography and political power
