EURASIA ABOVE ALL 

Manifest of the Eurasist movement

 Crisis of ideas in contemporary Russia 

   In our Russian* society  - specially in the social and political sphere – at the beginning of the new millennium a deficiency of ideas is painfully felt. The majority of the people - including governors, politicians, scientists, workers - are guided in life, in political choice by a set of momentary factors, casual concerns, transient ephemeral calls. We are quickly losing any general representation about the sense of life, about the logic of history, about the problems of man, about the destiny of the world. 

Existential and social choice has been substituted by aggressive advertising. In the place of meaningful and accountable political ideology stands some effective (or ineffective) PR. The outcome of the struggle of ideas is defined by the volume of investments in entertainment. Dramatic clashes of peoples, cultures and religions are turned into shows inspired by transnational corporations and oil holdings. Human blood, human life, human spirit became statistical abstraction, consumer cost, at its best - demagogic figure of speech in mellifluous and ambiguous humanitarian lamentations, hiding a double standard.  
   In the place of totalitarian uniformity, a totalitarian indifference has come. The majority of political parties and formalised social movements pursue tactical purposes. Practically nowhere can be found an explicit and consequent ideology capable to snatch man from a state of sleepy indifference, to make life worth living.  
 

Americanism and the need for alternative

    The most rigorous - but at the same time most harmful – world-view project has been formulated by consequent liberals. These forces, geopolitical oriented towards the US and the West, take as a sample for copying the American politics, American economy, American type of the society, American culture, American civilisation ideal. This camp has its dignity - their project is logical and consistent, its theory and practice are linked. But also logical are world evil, death, dissolving, division and loss of organic wholeness. The liberals say a decisive “yes” to that “uniform world”, confused, vain, individualist, oligarchic, deprived of any moral, spiritual and traditional orienting points, which the US  - world superpower – strive to create on a planetary scale, understanding their technological and economic superiority as a mandate for a privately-owned hegemony on a planetary scale. This Americanisation of Russia, of the whole world, this slavish submission to the new world gendarme - gendarme of shows – obviously is not very much pleasant to many people. But this opposition more often appears only emotionally, fragmentarily, inconsistently. Peoples and whole socio-political movements are inertially satisfied with the old thongs, with the residuals of different, more harmonious and noble epochs, with anything at least in some way differing from the atlantist tsunami which drags along the remains of our own Russian civilisation. The hostility to the American way of life, to the famous “new world order” is a fully positive quality, which should be greeted with favour anywhere we meet it. But it is not enough. An active counterproposal, a realistic, concrete and capable alternative is indispensable for us. Conditions at the beginning of the millennium are considerably new. And those who want a different future, rather than that controlled chaos and neon-light disintegration imposed on us by America, are compelled not only to say “no”, but also to formulate, to put forward, to demonstrate and to defend a different, our own, civilisation Plan.  
   The most massive, most generalising world-view offering such an alternative to the American hegemony, to the unipolar world, to the triumph of West, is Eurasism. 
  
 

The founding-fathers of Eurasism 

   Historically, Eurasism existed for 20 years as an attempt to interpret to the logic of socio-political, cultural and geopolitical development of Russia as a uniform and basically continuous process from Kiev Rus' to the USSR. The eurasists have detected behind the dialectics of national destiny of the Russian people and the Russian State a unitary historical mission, differently expressed at the various stages. One major thesis of early eurasists (count N.S.Trubetskoy, P. Savitsky) sounded like this: “The West against mankind ”, i.e. the nations of the world blossoming complexity of cultures and civilisations against the unitary, totalitarian Western pattern, against the economic, political and cultural domination of the West. Russia (both ancient, and orthodox-monarchic, and Soviet) saw the eurasists as a stronghold and avant-garde of this world process, as a citadel of freedom against the unidimensional hegemony on mankind of an irreligious, secularised, pragmatical and egotistical excrescence  - the Western civilisation, claiming for supremacy and for juridical, material and spiritual domination. On this basis the eurasists accepted the USSR as a new - paradoxical - form of the original path of Russia. Disapproving atheism and materialism in the cultural sphere, they recognised behind the external facade of communism the archaic national features, behind Soviet Russia the legitimate geopolitical heritage of the Russian mission.  
   Being consequent and convinced Russian patriots, the eurasists came to a conclusion about the inadequacy of the traditional forms, in which the National Idea in Russia was vested during the last centuries. The Romanov motto - “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” - was only a conservative facade hiding behind itself quite modern contents, basically copied from Europe. Soviet patriotism expressed the national idea in class terms, which neither grasps the essence of the civilizational problem, nor did recognise the meaning of the historical mission of Russia. The secular nationalism of the Romanov was but a formal imitation of the European regimes. Soviet patriotism ignored the national element, broke off the connection to traditions, swept aside the Belief of the fathers.  
   A synthetical new approach was indispensable. Such approach was  also developed within the framework of eurasist philosophy, within the social and political movement of the eurasists. The founding-fathers of Eurasism for the first time gave the highest possible estimation to the multi-national (imperial) nature of the Russian State. They were especially attentive to the Turkish factor. The role of the heritage of Gengis-Khan, trustee of the Tatar statehood assimilated by Moscow in the XVI century, was seen as a decisive turn of Russia to the East, to its origins, to its own values. In the orthodox legend just this epoch is linked to the  Sacred Rus', to the transformation of Moscow in the Third Rome (after the fall of Tsargrad and the end of the Byzantian Empire). The mission of the Sacred Rus' was expressed in the self-assertion of its own Eurasian culture, of an original social system, distinct in its main features from that path followed by the countries of the Roman Catholic and Protestant West.  
   Russia was conceived by the eurasists as the avant-garde of the East against the West, as a forward defence line of traditional society against modern, secular, ordinary, rationalised society. But in the centuries-old struggle for preserving a cultural “ego”, Russia differently from other Eastern societies actively acquired experience of the West, adopted the techniques it applied, borrowed some methods - but every time with the only purpose to confront the West with its own weapons. In modern language, this is called “modernisation without westernization”. Therefore Russia also managed longer than other traditional societies to effectively counter the pressure of the West.  
   From this the eurasists came to a major conclusion: Russia needs not simply to go back to its roots, but to combining a conservative and a revolutionary new start. Russia must actively modernise, develop, partially open to the surrounding world, but strictly saving and hardening its own identity. Therefore some called the eurasists as the “orthodox Bolsheviks”.  
   Alas, historically, this remarkable movement was not appreciated in due measure. The impressing successes of Marxist ideology made the refined conservative-revolutionary perspective of the eurasist ineffective, superfluous. By the end of the ‘30s, the original impulse of the eurasist movement, both in Russia and among the Russian emigration, had definitively died away.  
   The relay race of the Eurasist idea was run henceforth not so much by politicians and ideologists, how much by scientists (first of all the great Russian historian Lev Gumilyov).  
 

   Neo-eurasism 

   The dramatic events of the last decades in Russia, all over the world, have made again the eurasists’ ideas urgent, essential. The West coped with its most serious civilizational opponent – the USSR. Marxist ideology suddenly lost its appeal. But a general new alternative to westernism and liberalism (which today are embodied in their fullest development by the US and American civilisation - from which even the Europeans, the grandparents of the world monster, begin to feel nervous) has not appeared yet.  
   And could not appear anyway.  
   The separate pieces - pre-Revolutionary nationalism, clericalism, the all-inertial sovietism or the extravagant imagination of ecologism and leftism - could not turn into a united front. There was no common world-view base, no common denominator. The occasional rapprochement of positions of the opponents to globalism and Americanisation did not result in a true synthesis of world-views. 
   In this moment the most attentive minds, the purest hearts and the most flaming souls were converted too to the Eurasist heritage. In it they discerned a saving source, a germ of that doctrine, that ideology, which ideally met the requirements of the present historical moment. 
  Neo-eurasism began to be built as a social, philosophical, scientific, geopolitical, cultural current since the end the ‘80s. Distancing from the heritage of the Russian eurasists of the ‘20-30s, having incorporated the spiritual experience of the staroobryadtradition of Russian Orthodoxy, being enriched by the social criticism of Russian populists and socialists, having interpreted in a new way the achievements of the Soviet stage of domestic history, and at the same time having mastered the philosophy of traditionalism and conservative revolution, geopolitical methodology and original revolutionary doctrines of the “new left” (i.e. those intellectual currents, which were elaborated in the West, but directed against the dominant logic of its development) – Neo-eurasism became the most serious world-view platform in modern Russian society, acquiring the form of complete scientific school, of a system of social and cultural initiatives. 

   Neo-eurasism laid the bases of modern Russian geopolitics, gained a strong personnel potential of supporters in government structures and ministries and offices linked to the military sector, basing on eurasist geopolitics many serious operational international, military and economic projects. 

   Neo-eurasism influenced modern domestic politology, sociology, and philosophy. 

   Neo-eurasism gradually became a relevant conceptual instrument of Russian state monopolies requiring a strategic pattern for developing a long-term strategy of macroeconomic activity, depending not from momentary political processes, but from historical, geographical and civilizational constants. 

   Neo-eurasism laid the basis of the whole set of vanguard currents in youth culture, gave a vivifying impulse to creative, passionate development of the whole direction in art. 

   Neo-eurasism had a strong impact upon political parties and movements in modern Russia - we find large borrowings from neo-eurasist ideological arsenal in the programmatic documents of “Unity”, KPFR [Communist Party], OVR [Otetchestvo-Vsyo Rossiya], LDPR [Liberal-democratic Party], the movement “Russia” and of a series of smaller movements and parties. However these borrowings remain fragmentary, combined with other sometimes heterogeneous and even contradictory elements (all this makes large Russian parties rather tactical, de-ideologized formations created for the solution of short-term, local political problems).  
 

   The new social and political subject 

    The time has come to make the following step, to add eurasism a concrete social and political dimension. Neo-eurasist ideology gradually exceeded the level of pure theoretical elaboration. The new government of Russia is seriously engaged in the solution of strategic problems facing the country, and is obviously not satisfied with the primitive and destructive recipes imposed by the West and the bearers of Western influence in Russia: it needs a world-view and social and political support. The present authorities, their specificity, their social image, considerably differ both from the post-Soviet period and from the times of uncritical passion for reckless liberalism. A new state world-view, a new domestic pattern of polit-correctness have ripened. This is testified by that persevering search of a National Idea in which the authorities are today engaged.  
   If the usual political and party system is suitable for the decision of momentary problems (though we consider it as inadequate even in the narrow pragmatical sense), in an medium-term perspective (let alone a long-term strategic sight) it has no chance at all, and requires radical reforming. The existing system evolved during the process of demolition of the Soviet model and its substitution by a liberal-democratic pro-Western formation. But today neither the former, nor the latter is acceptable for Russia. And furthermore, it is inappropriate in the face of the very difficult situation the country is confronted to – a consequence of ludicrous policies previously followed. What we need are parties and movements based on a world-view, reflecting the interests of concrete strata of the population, merged with the people, educating, training and defending it, instead of exploiting the trust (and naivety) of the masses for the sake of private or group benefit. 

   All conditions have blossomed for the appearance of a rigorous Eurasist movement in new Russia. And those who stood at the origins of Neo-eurasism, who formed the theoretical premises and bases of Russian geopolitics, eurasist philosophy, conservative-revolutionary politology and sociology, who spent years fighting for the ideals of Eurasia, for the revival of the Russian people and our Great Power - those made the decision to form the new social and political movement “EURASIA”.  
 

   Who shall be the participants to the movement “Eurasia”? 

   To whom are we addressing the call to enter and to back our movement? To each Russian, educated and not, influential and the last of the dispossessed, to the worker and to the manager, to the needy and the well-off person, to the Russian and the Tatar, to the orthodox and the jew, to the conservative and the modernist, to the student and to the defender of the law, to the soldier and the weaver, to the governor and the rock-musician. But only to the one who loves Russia, who cannot think of himself without it, who has realised the necessity of a severe effort, which is required from all of us so that our country and our people remains on the map of the new millennium (from which they persistently attempt to erase us), to the one who wants, passionately wants, that all of us at last would raise in a mighty power, would cast away from our common organism its parasitic excrescence, would tear the veil of mental mist, would affirm above the country, the continent, the world our solar Russian ideals - ideals of Freedom, Equity, Fidelity to the Origins.  
 

   Radical Centre 

   The movement “Eurasia” is founded on the principles of radical centre. We are neither leftists nor rightists, we are neither slavishly compliant to the authorities, nor oppositionists at any cost, barking with a reason and without . We realise that today’s authority in Russia, the President of Russia Vladimir Vladimirovic Putin requires help, support, solidarity, cohesion. But at the same time blind submission to the leaders, uncritical connivance to authority only because it is authority, are today not less (if not more) pernicious than straight rebellion. We are centrists to the extent that the President and the authority act for the sake of the Power, for the sake of the people. And not in a populist and transient way, but in a medium and long-term perspective. Here again we will be for the President fervently, radically, up to the end, not paying attention to small inaccuracies, accepting all hardships and difficulties, which will arise since Russia will seriously be set by the purpose of rescuing itself and all the rest of the world from the terrible threat creeping from the West. Anything more centrist than our unconditional and total support to the patriotic power-building of the authority (even in its most unpopular actions) simply could not be. So, our forerunners, the Eurasists, supported the hated orthodox fundamentalist and Marxist regimes because they confronted the West – the worst of evils. But our radical centrism is not passive. We clearly realise that the present authority in Russia according to the  logic of things has no (and can not have) clear representation of the fundamental strategic purposes, of the philosophical and spiritual dramatic problem which is born by the new millennium - terrible, risky, threatening, problematic, misunderstood during centuries of bloody battles and cruel sufferings … In this sense the authority today is lost and requires help, orienting points, landmarks, specifying which is the task of the people, its most active, strong-willed, clever, idealistic, patriotic side (this also should gather in our movement, to become its core).  
   Here the roles are changed, and now is the turn of the authority to listen to the voice of Eurasia. This voice is not the servile “yes, sir? ” of condescending and artificial parties, good for chairs and tv-screens. It is the mighty radical appeal of the earth, the vote of generations, the cry from the depths of our spirit and our blood.  
 

   Priorities of the Eurasia movement

  Our movement spreads the Eurasist principles to all levels of life. 

   In the religious sphere it means constructive solid dialogue between the creeds traditional for Russia, - Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism. The Eurasian branches of world religions have many differences from those forms which have taken roots in other regions of the world. There is a common style of eurasist spiritual view, which, however, does not eliminate at all differences and originality of tenets. This is a serious and positive basis for rapprochement, mutual respect, mutual understanding. Due to the Eurasist approach to religious questions many inter-confessional frictions can be bypassed or arranged. 

   In the sphere of foreign policy, Eurasism implies a wide process of strategic integration. Reconstruction on the basis of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] of a solid Eurasian Union (analogue to the USSR on a new ideological, economic and administrative basis). 

   The strategic integration of internal spaces of the CIS should be gradually spread also to wider areas – to the countries of the Moscow-Teheran-Delhi-Beijing axis. An eurasist policy is invoked to open for Russia an exit to the warm seas, not through war and sufferings, but through peace and open friendly co-operation. 

    Eurasist policies towards the West implies prioritary relations with the European countries. Modern Europe - as against the epoch when the founding-fathers of Eurasism acted – does not represent anymore the source of “world evil”. The quick political events of  the XX century contributed to transfer this doubtful record even more west-ward - to Northern America, to the US. Therefore at a present stage Russia can find in Europe strategical partners interested in the revival of its former political power. Eurasist Russia should play the role of deliverers of Europe, but this time from the American political, economic and cultural occupation. 

   The eurasist policy of Russia is directed towards active co-operation with the countries of the Pacific region, first of all with Japan. The economic giants of this area should see in the eurasist policies of Russia the orienting point for a self-supporting political system, and also for a strategic potential of resources and new markets. 

   At a planetary level Eurasism means active and universal opposition to globalisation, is equal to the “anti-globalist movement ”. Eurasism defends the blossoming complexity of peoples, religions and nations. All anti-globalist tendencies are intrinsically “eurasist”.

   We are consequent supporters of “eurasist federalism”. This means a combination of strategic unity and ethno-cultural (in definite cases economic) autonomies. Different ways of life at a local level in combination with strict centralism in the basic moments, linked to State interests. 

   We should revive the traditions of the Russian people, contribute to the recovery of Russian demographic growth. And most important, awake in the people its intrinsic organic spirituality, morale, high ideals, living and fervent patriotism. Without the prioritary revival of the Russian nation, the eurasist project has no chance to become a reality. Understanding this fact is the base of our world-view. 

   Eurasism in social sphere means the priority of the public principle above the individual, subordination of economic patterns to strategic, social problems. The whole economic history of Eurasia proves that the development of economic mechanisms here happens according to an  alternative logic than the liberal-capitalist, individualist patterns of personal benefit which evolved in the West on the basis of Protestant ethics. The liberal logic of management is alien to Eurasia, and despite enormous efforts there is no way to break this deep-rooted feature of our people. The collective, communitarian principle of governing the economy, the contribution of the criterion of “equity” in the distribution process – all this represent a steady feature of our economic history. Eurasism insists on a positive account and evaluation of this circumstance, and on this basis gives preference to socially-oriented economic patterns. 

   Eurasism implies a positive re-evaluation of the archaic, of the ancient. It fervently refers to the past, to the world of Tradition. The development of cultural process is seen by Eurasism in a new reference to the archaic, to the insertion of original cultural motives in the fabric of modern forms. The priority in this area is given back to national motives, to the sources of national creativity, to the continuation and revival of traditions. 

   Being a new and fresh world-view, just having taken a definite form, Eurasism primarily addresses to youth, to the people whose consciousness has not been spoiled yet by random jumps from one inadequate ideological pattern to another, even less adequate. The eurasist ideal is the strong, passionate, healthy and beautiful man (instead of the bastard cocaine-addict of mondialist discos, the half-assed gangster or the slut for sale). We are in the condition to offer different, positive values, instead of the cult of ugliness and pathology, instead of the cynicism and servilism before the surrogates of world shows. We shall not allow our children to be killed, violated, degraded, perverted, sold or chained to a needle. Our ideal is a celebration of physical and spiritual health, force and worthiness, faith and honour.  

   The movement “Eurasia” can become a reality only in the event that many people will gather around it. Much can be done even by a single man, but, as Lautréamont said, everyone should care for poetry! 
   To an even greater extent – everyone should care for Eurasia!  
   Now everything depends on our efforts. Nobody is promising just victories, raise of welfare or entertainment industry shares. Ahead stays daily laborious work, often invisible from the outside.  
   Ahead stay difficulty and battle, loss and labours, but ahead also stay pleasure and Great Purpose!