Making Russia a friend again

In his magisterial book “Europe”, Norman Davies writes: “Europe is a relatively modern idea. It gradually replaced the earlier concept of ‘Christendom’ in a complex intellectual process lasting from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries.”

Jean Monnet, the founder of the European Union, said: “Europe has never existed. One has to genuinely create Europe.” 

“For more than 500 years,” says Davies, “the cardinal problem in defining Europe has centred on the inclusion or exclusion of Russia. Throughout modern history the Orthodox, autocratic, economically backward but expanding Russia has been a bad fit”. 

Nevertheless, Empress Catherine the Great announced in 1767 in St. Petersburg that “Russia is a European state”.

Dostoyevsky, at poet Pushkin’s funeral, eulogised Europe: “Peoples of Europe don’t know how dear to us they are.” 

Muscovy has been an integral part of Christendom since the 10th century. Moreover, one can see that since Pushkin’s time, Russia has created a larger part of the Western high cultural heritage than any other single European country and far much more than America.

Think of ballet (the best in the world by far) and the Bolshoi and Mariinsky theatres — and their protégés, from Nureyev to Anna Netrebko. Think of composers: Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Stravinsky and Shostakovich. Think of literature: Tolstoy, Gogol, Chekhov, Turgenev, Anna Ahmatova, Pushkin and Dostoyevsky.

Lenin identified closely with Europe. Only under Stalin did Russia move away from Europe.

In more recent times, both Mikhail Gorbachev and President Vladimir Putin talked of wanting to belong to the “Common European Home” — one day, to become members of the European Union.

But it is not just Europe that should remember its profound relationship with Russia, it is the US too.

The US and Russia have been at peace for 200 years. Despite the Cold War, a shot in anger has never been fired against the other.

Throughout the 19th century, Russia was America’s closest friend. It stood with the North during the Civil War and sent warships to prevent England and France from interfering on the side of the confederacy.

During the two world wars, the US and Russia were allies.

It was not until the communist takeover that the US entered a long period of enmity with Russia, only interrupted by the need for an alliance against Hitler.

After the war, the US was convinced Stalin had designs on Western Europe, although we now know there is nothing in the historical record to suggest he did.

The West, in response to its own myth of the red menace, created a hostile military alliance, NATO. Russia was provoked to create its counterpart, the Warsaw Pact.

As Isaac Shapiro wrote in his seminal article in World Policy Journal, president Bill Clinton ignored the fact that the Soviet Union and communism collapsed from within.

“He treated Russia as a defeated nation that had no choice but to accept America’s ideas of what was in Russia’s best interests. The US exploited Moscow’s perceived weakness. It was the Clinton administration that pushed NATO eastward up to Russia’s border.”

In 2001, president George W. Bush announced that the US would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Later, the US signed agreements with Poland and the Czech Republic (since modified by President Barack Obama) to deploy anti-missile defences that could be turned against Russia, albeit meant for defence against Iran.

At the beginning of the Obama administration, the US made clear that it wanted both Georgia and Ukraine to become one day NATO members. Russia, understandably, considered all these as moves to weaken and encircle it.

When Clinton took office, 70 per cent of Russians held a favourable view of the US. By the end of the millennium, it was down to 37 per cent, and the figure continues to decline.

Less political and economic provocation on the Western side and more respect for international law on the Russian side could have avoided the present Ukrainian imbroglio.

At last, this week German Chancellor Angela Merkel appears to be saying that Ukraine could be part of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Community as well as having a trade pact with the EU — the refusal to countenance this was the original trigger for the conflict. 

The EU and the US should have used the days since the end of the Cold War to strengthen Russia’s place in Europe. They should have given Russia the support they did to Germany and Japan after their defeat in World War II.

Russia is not an enemy, but it is being fashioned into one.

The West must halt the malicious side of its interference in Ukrainian affairs. The US and EU must work to create a Europe in which all countries can live in amity.

And that means that those who believe in Monnet’s “creating” of Europe must include Russia.