Post-Western Russia

The Russo-Ukrainian war marks before a turning point and an acceleration of tendencies long visible. In the case of Russia, it marks a decisive break with the 500-year-long attempt to modernise and adapt to Western modernity. Since 2012 Russia has been identified as a ‘state-civilisation’, including the affirmation of an identity and values opposed to those of the West. However, the repudiation is partial. While relations with the political West are ruptured, Russia remains ambivalent about the civilisational West, the entity that it has been trying to join for 500 years, while it remains relatively unambiguously in favour of the cultural West, the tradition drawing on Europe’s Judaic-Christian and Greco-Roman inheritance. This in turn is reflected in the coexistence and contestation between the four great macrofactions of Russian modernity: the liberals, the guardian-security (okhraniteli-siloviki) bloc, the neo-traditionalists (ranging from neo-communists to the Russian Orthodox Church), and the Eurasianists. Thus, Russia remains ideationally plurally even as it become more politically authoritarian. This shapes the debate about Russian civilisation today, although all factions seek to create some sort of ‘greater Russia’. All seek to make Russia great again, but their respective definitions of greatness differ.