Russia is very big, a huge continental ship. It is difficult to move it quickly onto a different course because of its bulk, but continuing inertia towards the abyss is also not an option. There is therefore a very complicated problem of the timing of Eurasian reforms (and there is no other in our situation).
Until 1991, the Soviet Union followed a single path, it was going in an unknown direction.
At that point a dilemma presented itself: change course
– to an Atlanticist (Western) course or
– change to an Eurasian course (anti-Western, but no longer strictly and orthodoxly Soviet, but more imperial).
The authorities decided to shift the course to the west.
The ship crumbled into pieces. By a miracle, the core survived, but in the 1990s it was discovered that the western course was also fatal, even for Russia.
Then Putin appeared, at first abruptly, and then with a teaspoon of sugar per hour changed course again, but this time not by 180 degrees from the western route, but by 90 degrees. It passed under the perpendicular. Something remained western and something no longer is. Eurasianism began to transform from a theoretical possibility into something more concrete, but in an inconsistent and fragmented manner, i.e. the course became half Eurasian.
In this way, the Russian Continent sailed on for another 22 years – sometimes jerkily, but more often relatively smoothly – already new! – by inertia, the inertia of Putin’s initial manoeuvre (90 degrees from the previous one).
Under Medvedev in 2008-2012 there was an attempt at a course correction in the direction of the West (hence Medvedev’s visit to the CFR headquarters with the mediation of the pork tycoon Friedman, the first – failed – reset with Hillary Clinton, the perfidious INSORs Jurgens and Gontmakher, Brzezinski’s visit promising support for a second Medvedev term and many other unpleasant things). Today Medvedev is a ‘systemic Eurasian’, then he was a ‘systemic Atlanticist’.
Putin is back and the attempt at liberal correction is over. Russia’s ship has returned to a strict 90°. Neither Atlanticism nor Eurasianism, or both Atlanticism and Eurasianism. The glass-half-empty/half-full metaphor fits perfectly here.
In 2014, Maidan, Russian Spring, ‘Crimea is ours’ and Novorossiya swung the ship abruptly in the direction of Eurasianism but not for long, and the course was desperately corrected to the usual 90 degrees. The Minsk agreements, the Gref (Sberbank not working in Crimea, the perverted Danya Milokhin), the not particularly successful measures with Covid and all the unhealthy things we have seen in the last eight years.
With 24 February 2022, the start of the SMO, here again is a sharp turn towards Eurasianism. It is no longer 90 degrees, because Atlanticism is in direct and frontal opposition to Russia. The West is bombing Russian cities under the guise of proxy. They could say: ‘We started it ourselves’. It doesn’t matter (for geopolitics). Fact-checking: Russian cities are being bombed and shelled by those whom the West supports, equips and pushes to do so, i.e. Atlanticism. That is all that matters. It is no longer possible to swim this way, but a 90 degree deviation is no longer enough. The course has already been irreversibly set in the direction of Eurasianism. And not only to Atlanticism, not even to the first Putin 90 degrees can be returned even theoretically.
But the ship is very big, too big. It will not be easy to reverse course and turn it into full Eurasianism, i.e. 180 degrees to the most fundamental vector of Western civilisation. There is no telling how long it will take, but it could be very long. It could again be an idiotic attempt. Unpredictable. The timing is, in a way, arbitrary. The gigantic size of the ship may be an argument in favour of taking as long as possible. But do it anyway, because you can’t not do it. 90 degrees to the West is already completely unacceptable, just as the purely Western path of Russian liberals in the 1990s is unacceptable.
Here, however, is the most important aspect: the SMO has set a new inertia, it has given impetus to a new historical trajectory. Russia has moved in a different direction since the 2000s than the half-empty/full glass of all the previous years of Putin’s rule.
No one is ever ready for change. But every now and then they come. The triumph of full-fledged Eurasianism in contemporary Russia may be postponed, but it cannot be prevented.
SMO is precisely the Event on which authentic Russian political theology was built in advance. SMO is the beginning of the rebirth from the ashes of the Empire, the last Kingdom.
From now on, it is a new vector. Probably the last in Russian history, given the eschatological context of the global apostasy of civilization.
We are approaching the moment for which the Russian people were created by God.
Translation by Lorenzo Maria Pacini