Historicising the geo-cultural relationship between Europe and Russia has long posed challenges to scholars; defining either alone is challenging, and the interaction between European and Russian identities and images more so. The Fifteenth Annual Conference of the “Research Network on the History of the Idea of Europe”, hosted by the University of East Anglia from 19 to 21 June 2024, aimed to shed light on this interaction. With a broad timeframe spanning from the eighteenth century to the present, the conference united scholars of various disciplines to discuss European perceptions of Russia and vice versa.
The opening panel consisted of only one speaker due to a cancellation. SHIRU LIM (Leiden) explored eighteenth century French authors’ observations of Russian imperialism. Crucial to this was the Enlightenment-typical dichotomy between the “spirit of conquest” and “spirit of commerce”. Alleged to underpin Russian territorial expansion, this conceptual binary could ill fathom the reality of Russian activity. Lim demonstrated how the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk catalysed Sino-Russian economic exchange, which provoked European debate on Eurasian civilisational divides. This anticipated the themes of many forthcoming talks.
PASCALE SIEGRIST (London) opened the second panel, analysing French geographer and anarchist Élisée Reclus (1830–1905). Despite never travelling to Russia, Reclus was influenced by Russian individuals among his contacts. Siegrist scrutinised these networks and the intellectual climate in which Reclus wrote, outlining how geographical determinism reinforced Russian marginalisation within European discourses. JACOPO BERNARDINI (Pisa) placed reciprocal focus on a Russian writer based in France: Boris Mirkin-Guetzévitch (1892–1955). After exile for his criticisms of Soviet legislation, Mirkin-Guetzévitch became an important voice among the Parisian Jewish Russian community, becoming published in European journals such as the “Jewish Tribune”. For Reclus and Mirkin-Guetzévitch, Russia and (Western) Europe respectively, were laboratories for maturing their domestic political visions.
The third panel considered Russia as imagined by British intellectuals. ALEXANDER JORDAN (Prague) explored Scottish author and philosopher Thomas Carlyle’s (1795–1881) writings of Russia and Russians. Carlyle believed Russian state authoritarianism canalised characteristic Russian brutishness into directions useful for subjugating “savage” peoples; this made Russia’s Empire a model for the British. Jordan illuminated Carlyle’s lesser-known admiration for Russian imperialism while integrating these with wider Victorian British policy discourses.
LUCIO VALENT (Milan) provided a measure of contrast by examining Margaret Thatcher: a twentieth century politician. His focus was Thatcher’s contributions to post-Cold War discourses about Russia, in the underexplored context of her post-resignation influence. Thatcher broadcasted her Atlanticist belief that Russia’s optimal path to recovery from Soviet collapse, in both a geopolitical and cultural sense: Westernisation, and NATO expansion. Synthesising these talks invited reflection on ways that Western coloniality has shaped Anglophone ideas of Russia, with historical variance in content, chronology, and form.
The keynote lecture, delivered by LIEN VERPOEST (Leuven), underscored the discursive lynchpins of Europe and Russia’s relationship, both historically and within the field of political science. Four consistent themes were identified by Verpoest: Othering and humiliation; hysteresis; isomorphism; and the notion of liminality. She furthermore discussed scholarship of European-Russian Relations itself, encouraging synergy between multidisciplinary methodologies. Verpoest demonstrated the potential for rigorous engagement along these lines by centring the notion of “Parallax” in her research into Russian-European relations in the early nineteenth century.
The second day of the conference began with its fourth panel. CATHERINE PHILLIPS (Norwich) analysed two courtiers of Catherine the Great: Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy (1704–1795) and Dmitry Mikhaylovich Goliltsyn (1721–1793). Their activity, for Phillips, exemplifies how Western analyses of Russia’s “Europeanisation” under Catherine have underrepresented the role of Russians themselves in that process. Betskoy and Golitsyn catalysed a tradition of Russian monarchs using art to buttress their political capital. Western European art becoming an axis of Russian imperial power therefore simultaneously empowered it as a cultural barometer there.
This perhaps anticipated Fyodor Dostoevsky’s (1821–1881) writings on quintessentially Russian expressions of identity, decades later. ANDREA SERRA (Cagliari) examined the tenets of these: morality and beauty within suffering, adherence to Tsarist authority, and devotion to God. Dostoevsky disputed the notion that Russia needed political direction from other European nations nor to imitate French art and language. Serra framed Dostoevsky’s attitude as a response to European Russophobia. Despite loving elements of western European culture, Dostoevsky deemed Russian marginalisation therein inevitable; Asia offered better purchase.
MARIUS HERMOUET (Paris) concluded the panel with his presentation on Russian philosopher Gustav Shpet (1879–1937). While influenced by contemporary currents of Slavophilism, Shpet’s priority in writing on Russia’s relationship to Europe was traversing what he saw as a “trench of ignorance” created by traditions of mysticism and Byzantinism. Hermouet illustrated how Shpet admired Husserl and other Western philosophers while rejecting political Westernisation, evincing a lucid grasp of transnational philosophies. This panel therefore exhibited a diversity of individual perspectives on Russian and Europe’s relationship within the arts and philosophy, while examining wider intellectual dynamics such as the growth and power of Slavophilia.
While Panel Five also discussed the arts, its focus was southern Europe as a cultural lightning rod. ANASTASIA AREFIEVA (Brussels) discussed nineteenth century Russian interest in Spain, concomitant with Russian theatre becoming a dynamic forum of engagement with cultures abroad. Spain, especially represented a “peculiar mirror” for Russians. From tourist experiences to mutual theatrical celebration of fortitude as a national characteristic, Arefieva catalogued how Spanish theatre could delight liberal-minded Russian audiences. This derived from perceived Hispano-Russian similarities and, simultaneously, intrigue for the exotic.
IRYNA MYKHAILOVA (Cambridge) analysed the Italian Renaissance within Soviet intellectual spaces. Long considered an epitome of progress in Russia, the Renaissance was a tantalising rhetorical tool for the Bolsheviks, conditional on their ability to reconcile it with a robust domestic proletarianism. Mykhailova explored their process: translating select Renaissance works, reinterpreting humanist concepts as anti-bourgeois, and connecting Machiavelli to Marxist scholarship. This epoch in Soviet culture did not long survive 1920s Stalinisation; similarly, the popularity of Spanish theatre did not outlive the October Revolution.
Panel Six afforded speakers the opportunity to interrogate identity-driven discourses. KSENIA RADCHENKOVA (Graz) began with a longue durée approach to the concept of sovereignty in Russia, the phylogeny of which she contrasted with Westphalian thought. “Samoderzhavie”, autocracy as it developed after Russian clerical autonomy from Byzantium, was crucial. Radchenkova portrayed this topic as an ideological palimpsest, with nineteenth century literature, Bolshevik Socialism, and Eurasianism all providing new layers.
Afterwards, OLGA DUBROVINA (Padua) examined perestroika’s impact on the Soviet space programme. Drawing on her research on space diplomacy, science, and commerce within Soviet-Western relations, Dubrovina explored how aerospace represented an arena for cooperation as well as competition. She utilised data from interviews, memoirs, and EU archives, while detailing the activity of the European Space Agency and international projects. Such cornerstones lent palpability to the often elusive study of Russian geopolitical identity.
VITALIJ FASTOVSKIJ (Münster) closed the panel by delving into Russian anti-communist émigré experiences. The Tolstoy Foundation, created to provide such refugees humanitarian aid, promoted the image of the West as a benevolent Christian force against communist tyranny. Tsarist Russian history was whitewashed to achieve this. Fastovskij contextualised these polemical patterns and the narratives of immigrants, often defensively elastic to weather changing circumstance and/or Western xenophobia. The Cold War therefore compounded the fluctuation of Russian identities in the micro and macro.
Beginning the seventh panel, PATRICIA CHIANTERRA-STUTTE (Bari) explored twentieth century European geopolitical evaluations of Russia, particularly from Harold Mackinder (1861–1947) and Karl Haushofer (1869–1946). Both men predicted Russian acquisition of global power, their maps respectively dystopic or utopic in suggestion of this possibility, via Russia’s potentiality of resolving the dichotomy of land- and sea-power. Chianterra-Stutte studied their work in the context of geopolitical methodology evolving, maps themselves becoming instruments of ideology and epochal prognoses.
JULIETTE BRETAN (Cambridge) analysed nineteenth and twentieth century authors who explored East-Central European identities, Poland in particular becoming a battleground of polemic. Polish-British author Joseph Conrad challenged Western romanticisation of Russia and presumptions of Slavic backwardness, both of which shaped how he was profiled in Britain. T.S. Eliot’s denial of Russian allegiance among Lithuanians and Stefan Żeromski’s reflections on Polish identity in crisis further illustrate the intensity of these narratives.
Another medium of writing was explored by ALEKSANDRA TOBIASZ (Mainz): the travelogue. Joseph Roth, Stefan Zweig and Miroslav Krleža all travelled to Russia in the 1920s and drew differing conclusions as to the country’s common portrayal as an Asiatic Other. Roth’s travel crystallised the differences for him, Zweig equated Russian ideological ambition to that of the USA, Krleža observed similarities between mundane, day-to-day lived experiences that undermined ideas of binarized European-Russian demarcation. Tobiasz’s chosen authors highlighted the interactive potentiality of identity, and how individual observations could vary.
On the third day of the conference, ARPINE MANIERO (Munich) opened the eighth panel. Her presentation was on demarcation discourses generated by nation-building projects in nineteenth century Armenia. Armenian pursuit of autonomy challenged the Russian Empire’s claim to be a Christian emancipator to Ottoman-occupied Europe, in contrast with British and German apathy towards the Armenian genocide. Maniero detailed how these dynamics have shaped Armenian intellectual discourse of Russia and the West, enduring throughout the Soviet era.
VESA VARES (Turku) explored similar nation-building discourses in nineteenth and twentieth century Finland. Crucial to his analysis was a recurring Finnish claim to expertise of Russia, an exclusive closeness alternately used to espouse either a special relationship, or Finnish utility to the West as a strategic aide against an “Asiatic” Other. Vares delved into historical elements of Finnish racism towards Russia, a predecessor of political Europhilia, as well as a post-Second World War friendship policy that overlapped with the pursuit of “Finlandization”. The peculiarities of this bilateral relationship were ultimately shown to resist simplification.
The panel closed with ERKJAD KAJO (Pavia), whose focus was Albania following the San Stefano Treaty (1878). Imperialist power dynamics between Russia and Europe were fodder for Albanian intellectuals. Platformed by print capitalism, they portrayed Albania as a protective bulwark of Western civilisation, curbing Russian expansion. Concerns of territorial integrity and pan-Slavism in neighbouring Serbia drove such narratives, with Kajo demonstrating how the bulwark myth retains relevance among Albanian engagement with actors like NATO and the EU.
Finally, the ninth and concluding panel of the conference opened with ALEXANDROS BALATSOUKAS (Gießen) providing an overview of Greco-Russian relations throughout history. Particular focus was given to the economic ties between the two nations as well as overlap between policy and ideology. The theme of Constantinople as a Tsarist spiritual successor was expanded in this paper. As Balatsoukas demonstrated, Cold War realpolitik upturned these dynamics; Greek and Russian strategies diverged, thus straining former religious-based amity.
NIKOS PAPADATOS (Geneva) gave the final presentation, examining some of these established twentieth century Greco-Russian cultural dynamics in microcosm. In the Cold War, this was largely driven by Greek Cypriot communist partisan activity. Stalinisation surprised Greek communists in Russia in its disciplinary stridency; it provoked arrests, factionalism within the Progressive Party of the Working People (AKEL), and broader interaction with other CPs. Papadatos evaluated AKEL’s pursuit of an authentic Greek identity amidst the civil war and diverse CP organisational structures.
This conference highlighted the historical and contemporary pluralism of image-making between Russia and Europe, particularly constructions of Orientalism and Eurocentrism therein. Suggestions of Russia courting geopolitical or identificatory ties with Asia, as opposed to Europe, also recurred. The presentations, in their breadth, showcased the adaptability of such tropes across time and nation. Important, however, was the agency of individuals. Many presentations spotlighted individual writers or publishers as participants in or objectors to popular images or narratives of Russia and Europe.
No single intellectual genealogy fully encapsulates Russo-European historical exchange. Byzantium, as just one example, has contributed both spiritual common ground and estrangement, depending on the region of Europe. Therefore, methodological frameworks for engaging with the legacy of ideas between Russia and Europe remain a crucial point of interest. Particularly important is interrogating the political utility of given narratives; images of Russia or Europe have alternately (or even simultaneously) facilitated artistic exchange and/or reinforced imperialist rhetoric. Scholars of Russia and Europe have inherited a duty of care to the material, which the crisis of the Russo-Ukrainian war has further elevated.
Conference overview:
David Milne (Norwich): Welcome addresses and introduction
Panel 1: European Views on Russian (Un)Civilization
Shiru Lim (Leiden): Commerce, Conquest, and the Problem of Russian Imperial Expansion in Enlightenment Political Thought
Panel 2: Russia and the (European) Other
Pascale Siegrist (London): Reclus’s Russia: Anarchism, Despotism, and Geographical Determinism
Jacopo Bernardini (Pisa): Boris Mirkin-Guetzévitch: A Pioneering Voice in Twentieth-Century Constitutional Law
Panel 3: European Views on Russian (Un)Civilization – Part II
Alexander Jordan (Prague): Thomas Carlyle and Russophilia in Victorian Britain
Lucio Valent (Milan): Thatcher and Russia after 1990: Not a Love Affair?
Keynote Lecture
Lien Verpoest (Leuven): The Rings of Razumovsky: Parallax in European-Russian Relations
Panel 4: Russian Thought(s): Art, Literature, Philosophy and Europe
Catherine Phillips (Norwich): Cultural Europeanisation at the Court of Catherine II: The Contribution of Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy (1704–1794) and Dmitry Mikhaylovich Goliltsyn (1721–1793)
Andrea Serra (Cagliari): Dostoevsky and Europe: Odi et amo
Marius Hermouet (Paris): Exploring Gustav Shpet’s Occidentalism: A Study of Russian Philosophy and European Influence
Panel 5: Russian and the USSR and the European South
Anastasia Arefieva (Brussels): Spanish Imagery in Russian Theatre
Iryna Mykhailova (Cambridge): The Italian Renaissance and the Soviet Socialist Culture in the 1920s
Panel 6: Russian Identities in the Flux
Ksenia Radchenkova (Graz): The History of Russian Identity Pendulum through the Deconstruction of the Sovereignty Concept
Olga Dubrovina (Padua): Divided by the Curtain, United in Space
Vitalij Fastovskij (Münster): “There was no anti-Semitism”: Images of Russia on the Move in the Cold War Era and Beyond
Panel 7: Central European Perspectives
Patricia Chianterra-Stutte (Bari): The Pivot of Geopolitics: Russia in the Geopolitical Imagination at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century
Juliette Bretan (Cambridge): “Bin gar keine Russin”: European-Russian Relations in Early Twentieth-Century Portrayals of East-Central Europe
Aleksandra Tobiasz (Mainz): Images of Russia in the Writings of Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and Miroslav Krleža
Panel 8: Russia and Europe: National Case Studies
Arpine Maniero (Munich): “English Ships Cannot Climb the Taurus Mountains”: Images of Russia and Europe in Armenian Political and Intellectual Discourse
Vesa Vares (Turku): Security, Phobia, Asia, Friend? Finland and the Image of Russia
Erkjad Kajo (Pavia): Defenders of the West: Russia, Europe, and Albanian Identity Formation
Panel 9: Greek Views on Russia
Alexandros Balatsoukas (Gießen): In the Shadow of Empires: Greece’s Complex Relationship with Russia
Nikos Papadatos (Geneva): Navigating European Identity: Soviet Foreign Policy and Balkan Cultural Shifts in Greece, 1944–1945