The Russo-Ukrainian war has become the most tragic page of Europe’s 21st century history — not only because it has claimed the lives of almost a million people, but also because it is yet another instance of the most brutal and senseless type of military-political strife: the one with ideological and civilizational reasons behind it. Europe has seen many such conflicts, and they have time after time proved to be the bloodiest. The 17th century European wars of religion, campaigns of revolutionary terror, and attempts to impose a fascist world order were more destructive than conventional geopolitical confrontations1.
1 — The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) claimed about 8 million victims in Europe, about 11% of the population of the countries involved (see e. g. Wilson, Peter. Europe’s Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War, London: Allen Lane, 2009, pp. 4, 787); WW2 (1939-1945) took at least 44 million people, or 8. 8% of the population of the European countries involved (including the USSR); at the same time, the number of victims of the Napoleonic Wars was about 5. 8 million, and of WW1 — about 22 million and respectively 3. 6% and 4. 2%.
Europe expended much intellectual, economic and political effort to eliminate the possibility of this kind of war. The Reformation era’s conflicts concluded with the introduction of the Westphalian system2, which still remains the basis of the state sovereignty doctrine and international relations in general. The response to the 18th century revolutions was the expansion of the rule of law and the formation of representative democratic institutions3, which dramatically changed the continent’s political image. The consequence of the 20th century tyrannies’ frenzy was the invention of supranational structures that subjugated individual countries and created new original forms of political interaction4, complemented by economic and social integration.
2 — See, e. g. : Onnekink, David (ed. ). War and Religion after Westphalia, 1648-1713, London, New York: Routledge, 2009; McKay, Derek and Scott, H. M. The Rise of the Great Powers 1648-1815, London: Routledge, 1983 and others.
3 — See Tilly, Charles. Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650-2000, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005; Merrimann, John. A History of Modern Europe from Renaissance to the Present, New York, London: W. W. W. Norton & Co. , 1996, and others.
4 — See Pagden, Anthony (ed. ) The Idea of Europe from Antiquity to the European Union, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002; Burgess, Michael. Federalism and the European Union: the Building of Europe, 1950-2000, London, New York: Routledge, 2000; Hix, Simon. The Political System of the European Union, Houndmills, New York: Palgrave, 1999, and others.
All these various affairs stemmed from a single cause: the spatial limitations of Europe and the impossibility of getting away from any of its constituent parts so it would not pose a threat to others if left to its own devices. In the second half of the 20th century, the dilemma seemed to have been resolved in three crucial steps. First, WW2 defeated the forces that attempted to reverse the main trend of European history: the movement towards a more humane and citizen-governed society, towards the rationalisation of all aspects of the social order (this was enshrined in the institutions of a united Europe, which had been taking shape since the early 1950s). Then, from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, all European states that had remained imperial metropoles at the beginning of this period lost their colonial possessions, which only intensified integration trends, making Europe a unique “postimperial empire”5 and opening the way to a single political community’s formation. Finally, in the late 1980s, the communist experiment collapsed, paving the way to Europe’s expansion to the east, including the Soviet Union as heir to one of the great European empires, the Russian Empire. The call for a “Common European Home”6, which grew out of the equally ambitious “Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals”7, seemed feasible in 1991 as Russia gave up claim on its colonies and “turned its face to the West,” whose economic and social leadership was perceived as unquestionable at the time8.
5 — See Ash, Timothy Garton. “Postimperial Empire: How the War in Ukraine Is Transforming Europe” in: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 102, No 3, May/June 2023 and Inozemtsev, Vladislav. “Postimperial empire” in: Untouchable Stockpile, 2023, No 1, pp. 3-9.
6 — See Gorbachev, Mikhail. “Europe is our common home” in: Perestroika and new thinking for our country and for the whole world, Moscow: Politizdat, 1987, pp. 199-219.
7 — In his famous speech in Strasbourg in November 1959, de Gaulle said: “Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, that will decide the fate of the world!” (“Oui, c’est l’Europe, depuis l’Atlantique à l’Oural, c’est l’Europe, c’est toute l’Europe, qui décidera du destin du monde!”).
8 — Fukuyama’s book is generally regarded as the manifesto of this leadership (Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man, NYC: Free Press, 1992).
Now, 40 years after the beginning of the Perestroika, the situation has been reversed. The chance to restore Europe’s historical unity has been lost — and all sides of this unfinished process have contributed to it. Russia started its “crusade” not because of the desire to limit the expansion of NATO, but rather out of the desire to spread abroad a new version of authoritarian fascist regime, which is based on the pretext of “traditional values” protection (in the words of the Kremlin ideologists9), and more precisely — on opposition to those trends of modernity Europe has nurtured since the beginning of the modern era10. Russia, while European in history and spirit, at the beginning of the 21st century became the same existential threat to Europe as even more European in history and spirit Germany did in the middle of the 20th century (we note there were failed attempts to warn European society about such probability in the early 1990s11). Today’s situation looks even more dangerous, as a possible armed conflict would be more destructive than any of the previous ones, and, besides, Europe may not have the allies that saved it 80 years ago.
9 — See, e. g. : Kharichev, Alexander. “Civilisation ‘Russia’” in: Civic Education Notebook, 2025, vol. 7 (March-April), pp. 4-10.
10 — See, e. g. : Etkind, Alexander. Russia vs. modernity, London: BAbook, 2024.
11 — See Yanov, Alexander. After Yeltsin. “Weimar Russia.”, Moscow: KRUK Publishing Company, 1995.
Europeans, in our view, have been too slow to grasp the threat, trying to present Russia as a “normal country”12 and enticing it with the prospect of economic cooperation. Now, rushing to the other extreme, they have begun rearmament campaigns that should help repel Moscow’s possible aggression. In the first case, Europe mistakenly reduced the dialogue with Russia to bargaining with its political and financial elites, much of which had a purely opportunistic interest in it. As a result, Russia has not developed political institutions or a strata of “European Russians” who could prevent the country from moving towards authoritarianism. In the second case, Europeans rely on the notion that large-scale military preparations in Europe (no matter how successful they turn out to be) can be a deterrent to Russia, whose aggression may be driven by the Kremlin’s perception of Europe’s weakness, which now allows it to seize new territories. The strengthening of Europe is certainly a correct trend, albeit a belated one. However, historical analogies show that the most effective strategy for preventing military conflicts is to make a friend or at least an ally out of an enemy.
12 — See: Shleifer, Andrei. A Normal Country. Russia After Communism, Cambridge (Ma. ), London: Harvard Univ. Press, 2005.
Given the current circumstances, it is necessary to acknowledge the obvious: Russia’s proximity to the countries conventionally known as European is a reality that cannot be helped. As the Finnish President Alexander Stubb recently noted, “We in Finland must mentally prepare for the fact that at some point, relations with Russia will begin to recover, [because] nothing removes the fact that Russia is and will always be Finland’s neighbor.”, and the same applies to the EU as a whole. No matter how any politician, intellectual or ordinary European feels about Russia and its people, the coexistence of Europe and Russia will remain inevitable. It likely will not turn into such a profound integration as we see today in the example of the EU countries — although this scenario should not be ruled out: in the last hundred years, we have seen how a strong friendship was established between the largest European countries in just a couple of decades after two major wars that took place before the eyes of one generation.
Russia’s history is akin to a pendulum swinging between the East and the West, from a liberal society to an authoritarian state (in the words of one of Russia’s greatest historians uttered on a very different occasion, “falling and rising, this centuries-long movement continues to this day”13). And we believe that next time Russia “turns its face to Europe,” Europeans should offer Russia a realistic and yet attractive reintegration plan — a comprehensive political and social union in which the development of Greater Europe would find a logical conclusion. Despite the Kremlin ideologists’ rhetoric about a “turn to the East,” Russia has no motives or reasons to turn into Asia’s western periphery, so the only alternative to its European integration is isolation and complete autarky, which hardly seems desirable for Russian society.
13 — Klyuchevsky, Vasily. ‘The Course of Russian History’ in: Essays. Moscow: Mysl, 1987, vol. 1, с. 50.
This is why we believe that the most important prospective task for European politicians and intellectuals is to develop a program to “lure” Russia into Europe, as the lack of thereof led to the lost opportunity for unity that opened up in the last decades of the 20th century. Given that failure, we must recognize that success is possible only when the European project’s appeal is understood by a significant part (if not the majority) of Russians — when they see benefits of becoming Europeans without moving to Europe and joining European societies as immigrants. Attempts to negotiate only with the Russian authorities are pointless, as they will not be able to secure support for the European project from both civil society and the bulk of Russian citizens. The task that Europeans thus face is exceptional in its complexity, but we are convinced: it is only by setting goals that have never been achieved before Europe has become the centerpiece of human civilization. And, in order to maintain this status, it must again set a goal which looks impossible at first glance. For what, if not this approach, is the essence of European realism?14
14 — We are, of course, referring here to the famous phrase of J. Dovignot and M. Leris “Be realistic, ask for the impossible.” (“Soyez réalistes, demandez l’impossible”) (quoted in: Dosse, Francois. History of Structuralism, vol. 2: The Sign Sets 1967-Present, Minneapolis (Min. ), London: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1997, p. 113).