UKRAINE: EURASIANISM AND ATLANTICISM 

GEOPOLITICAL AND CULTURAL-POLITICAL ORIENTATIONS

Geopolitics, determined by its founders Friedrich Ratzel (the first to make it a separate field of research) and Rudolf Kjellen (the first to provide the underlying definitions and asserting the whole thing as a science) is a kind of Weltanschauung whereby any economic, political, or cultural issues are dealt with based on a given country's geographic location. Geopolitics substitutes the multidimensional individual by a spatial one. After all has been said and done, this world outlook is as limited as any other one dimensional or nationalistic one.

Geopolitics is a limited notion not only because it portrays phenomena in a simplistic one dimensional manner, but also because, using historical examples, it seldom refers to chronopolitics - i.e., to man as a temporal phenomenon - or to cultural politics as the sphere of the self-consciousness of a given polity in the process of implementing a certain short-term purposeful strategy. But even when geopolitics deals with certain long-term historical trends and cultural characteristics it uses a rather ambiguous, metaphoric language (e.g., the supremacy of dry land or of seas). This limitation of geopolitics can be overcome only when taking a closer look at a specific period when a given scheme/pattern was predominant within a given polity, taking into account the attendant cultural characteristics, which the state places in first place, the presence or absence of a long-term state strategy, and the result of the policies using such a geopolitical schema.

Slavism is the source of the Russian ideology of Eurasianism, creating the concept of unity in the linguistic context, where cultural commonality (Pan-Slavism) is derived from a linguistic one. Slavs make up a rather large component of Eurasian civilization. One of the major Slavophile tenets of Konstantin Leontiev, predecessor of Savitsky, the father of Eurasian ideology, has it that the Slavs, while a language family, are not a cultural one. Moreover, it cannot be considered a geopolitical entity or a supranational historical community.

The first Russian variant of Eurasianism was consistently formulated by P. N. Savitsky (Russky uzel evraziystva [The Russian Eurasian Knot], Moscow, 1997). Eurasianism originates from works by Slavophiles where this complication was first mentioned as ensuing from attempts to single a cultural community out of a language family. To surmount this obstacle, the Eurasian concept was developed, being more global, in that the authors based it not so much on a linguistic as on a continental communality. Savitsky's followers include Trubetskoy, Vernadsky, Karsavin, Suvchivsky, and of course Lev Gumilev as the most spectacular figure in the field with his passionarism (a neo-Eurasianism containing the idea of Turkic-Slavic merger and choice of Moslem countries as an anti-Atlantic ally).

In our opinion, Eurasianism is an attempt - and it seem to us a rather unsuccessful one - to develop a concept of ruling a continent based on the assumption that the "immovable platform " (i.e., Russia, referred to as the "Eurasian knot") is the focal point of influence affecting the other polities of that continent by virtue of the strength of its geographic position. Originally, the concept of Russia's key role was put forth by Sir Halford John MacKinder (1861-1947), author of the heartland theory, originally stated in 1904 and revised in 1919 and 1943. In this theory he proposes that north-central Eurasia, because of its geographic isolation and vast natural resources, would eventually be the heart of the world's controlling political power. Then there was Karl Ernst Haushofer (1896-1946), a German army officer, geographer, and prominent advocate of the geopolitical basis for Nazi plans for world domination, followed by Savitsky upholding Eurasian centrism, allocating Russia a very special, exclusive role. And the formulation is as consistent as that of the German geopoliticians (like Haushofer's project) which had quite an impact on Hitler's military strategy. From the geopolitical perspective, World War II could be regarded as a major confrontation between two focal Eurasian centers, Germany (Third Reich) and Russia (USSR), each vying for supremacy on the continent. The USSR won that Eurasian war and then lost the Cold War contest to the Atlantic coalition.

Zbigniew Brzezinski's book The Great Game, appearing in print in 1998 (translated into Russian by Moscow's Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya Publishers), is directed against Russia's recent, rather aggressive, attempts to actualize the Eurasian geopolitical concept in its foreign policy. In fact, this book formulates Washington's strategic stand with regard to Russia's Eurasian geopolitical concept. The United States is creating a situation such that no other country could control the whole continent. The ongoing Balkan crisis and Russia's stand are fresh evidence that Moscow still claims Eurasian supremacy. Those closely following late twentieth century developments like the USSR's collapse, dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, Russia's continued regionalization, and the Moscow-NATO-Balkan confrontation have every reason to assume that geopolitics has no prospects in Ukraine, while cultural politics do. The historical experience of the second half of the twentieth century points to the supremacy of culture, not geographical parameters or conditions.

CULTURAL POLITICAL SUPREMACY: TALASSOCRACY AND TELUROCRACY

Basic geopolitical cultural dualism, according to Karl Schmitt's element theory, is represented by two civilization types: talassocracy and tellurocracy. The former means sea power (based on the original notion of water, fluidity, democracy, and the latter, power on land (dry land, permanence, ideocracy). The predominant role of these cultural characteristics in the encounter between the two civilization types was formulated by Karl Schmitt in his book, Land and Sea, published in 1942. Here the distinction is interpreted philosophically, relating to basic legal and ethical systems. Geopoliticians tend to make a major error by reducing this difference between the types of civilizations to that of the notions of land and water, in other words, reducing fundamental cultural/civilization distinction to differences in the geopolitical characteristics of a given locality.

This distinction is more fundamental than initially appears, as shown by the large number of extremely serious works by scholars, writers, and philosophers, who did not reduce it to the confrontation between just two civilization types along geopolitical lines. In 1932, Henri Bergson published The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, defining the ethical and religious distinctions between the two cultures. In 1945, Karl Popper (1902-1994), Austrian-born British philosopher of science, known for his theory of scientific method and for his criticism of historical determinism, published his book, The Open Society and Its Enemies (that is, ideocracy as a closed society counterbalanced by an open one). Vladimir Lefevre, former Soviet researcher, wrote a book in the 1980s, fundamentally describing the two cultural types, relying on theoretical and experimental study, defining them as two principally different ethical systems (an approach known as the algebra of consciousness). In 1996, Samuel Huntington wrote his book, The Clash of Civilizations, stressing cultural differences as the main cause of confrontation.

All these studies by scholars, writers, and philosophers in one way or another focus on two principles underlying any national policy: a given society's strategic perspective secured by the state and the formulation of cultural development guidelines to implement it. With regard to the former problem, geopolitics is just one of the methods of expressing the historical stability of a given polity (territorial stability), on a par with chronopolitics and cultural politics. The second problem is manifest in finding adequate ways to secure historical stability with regard to a given polity (e.g., stable development in perspective) - strategic planning from the perspective of cultural, technological, and social priorities.

Geographic position, natural resources, demographic, religious, and other aspects do not vanish; rather, they no longer work only in terms of geographical coordinates, but also within their given information-cultural theater of operations, thus bringing forth cultural politics. Given today's means of transportation and communication, geographical position no longer has such importance as it did in past decades. The dynamism of migration or dependence of communications on terrain can no longer be determined using geographical indices now that we have movie, telephone, television, video, and computer technologies - and of course the Internet. Social change becomes connected not with literal territorial changes, but with those in the space of cultural influence of a certain polity, with changes in that polity's attitude toward the times; whether a given state operates from a day to day or long-term perspective. History, regarded chronopolitically, can be used to actualize one period or another, and this actualization does not require falsifying or rewriting history; it requires only the actualization of that part of a given culture connected with the chronopolitically chosen period of history and orienting it toward that period.

Thus, if Slavs distinguish themselves from the Anglo-Saxon and Romano-Germanic world, this is a doctrine of the language delimitation of states, Atlanticism and Eurasianism - doctrines of distinguishing civilizations in terms of the political influence of territory and geographical aspirations of states, then talassocracy and tellurocracy are doctrines of the cultural delimitation of civilizations. The war going on in the world is not geopolitical but cultural. There is a redistribution of language groups and continental space in conjunction with the delimitation of cultural communities or civilizations: talassocracy and tellurocracy.

Characteristic of the former are nomadism (especially maritime), trade, individual entrepreneurial spirit, along with the mobility of ethical and legal norms. Civilizations of this type develop quickly and easily change their outward cultural attributes. Tellurocratic civilizations are connected with fixed space, stability of cultural orientations and characteristics. Characteristic of this type are a settled way of life, conservatism, rigid legal norms, powerful ideology (more often than not Messianic), repressive collectivist ethics, and stable social hierarchy (official and otherwise). {Compare these and the characteristics found in A. Dugin's Geopolitics where the author glorifies this type of civilization.}

Civilizations of the second type are inner-continental, including tsarist Russia (USSR). They are regarded as a "stationary platform," "heartland," or "geographical axis of history," in that they remain stable and immobile in history. Meanwhile, civilizations of the former type, the coastal zones of the Eurasian mainland, are zones of intensive cultural development. For tellurocracy the main thing is not values but ideas being part of a solid ideology and the latter playing a system-forming role. Values are a Western notion meaning the presence of qualities being discussed and rejuvenated, something man is free to choose between and use in building the essence of his life. The main characteristic of each such value are mobility and rationality, and an opportunity to be united unsystematically. Values are the underlying notions of the Atlantic civilization whose geopolitical space is centered on the Atlantic Ocean (e.g., North America and Western Europe). Ideas and ideologies are the key elements of the Eurasian civilization whose geopolitical space is connected with Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TALASSOCRACY AND TELLUROCRACY

The main values in talassocratic civilization are the right to live, to be free, and have property. Values emerge as positive life strategies proven on the individual level. Consider private property. It is a value for talassocracy. On the other hand, in the tellurocratic civilization private property may be legally permitted, but it is not a value, because it is not part of a set ideology as an idea (the ideology says that property is a threat and the owner a thief); to this end the elite is divided into two hostile camps; here one can find no positive examples of using private property, because a given society does not recognize these life strategies as successful en masse. As a result, property is not seen as something acquired fairly, and one's wealth is not considered deserved. On the contrary, society resents those who have property. Large numbers of people wait for jobs and wages. On the other hand, collective property is not considered as a value either; it is intangible or otherwise mastered; no one can say see, this is what I have. Hence, tellurocratic civilizations cannot develop by rendering certain values mobile, because these very values are absent as a means of transferring cultural experience.

In these civilizations values are transmitted by ideology. In lieu of values tellurocracy upholds a certain idea, making it a rule, a Messianic idea of its exclusiveness, of some special mission, a special way turned into a systematized ideology, which interferes not only in collective labor activities, but also with family and private life, conquering people's consciousness, at times subjugating the personality, turning it into a collective nonentity.

When a crisis occurs in a talassocratic civilization certain values are revised, but this revision is essentially unsystematic, not total, because this revision occurs on the individual level and then takes shape as a well-balanced system. For example, Weber, Durkheim, Jaspers, et al. would perceive and systematize values only after they become the flesh and blood of many individual lives.

With a tellurocratic civilization it is an altogether different story. Here the first and foremost task is a new ideology, another Messianic idea to unite one and all, gather the land, exerting compulsory influence on and subjugating other peoples. This time, however, the crisis befalling Russia and other post-Soviet states is far more serious, for it is rooted deep in Orthodoxy as a religion, collective ethics as the organizing beginning, and it consists in the absence of an ideology capable of reviving motivation for life, work, and reproduction. This motivation can no longer be resumed within the ideology because of overall distrust of each and every ideology by the people.

It is in their mutual influence that their main contradictions are found: each tries to dominate the other and impose its own strategies. Here lies the insurmountable obstacle for tellurocracy. First, one can keep something mobile under control only being mobile oneself. Rigid, with its habits, social rules, and ethical norms resistant to change, tellurocracy as a community constantly gravitating toward a great universally unifying idea cannot exert any influence on countries where ideologies do not play the dominant role. Second, once tellurocracy is faced with the need to become more mobile (say, in order to rule the Eurasian continent) it will inevitably become vulnerable to domination by talassocracies it will transform into a talassocracy, merging with the talassocratic civilization. The Cold War was viewed in Soviet times as ideological warfare (and it was, from the tellurocratic standpoint). However, outside the cultural characteristics of tellurocracy the Cold War can be perceived as a war between these two types of civilization, culture, ethics, two ways of organizing the space in which people live and of organizing labor.

On the other hand, a talassocratic civilization finds it easier to exert an influence on a tellurocratic one, because this influence is kept at the level of specific values, individual examples of successful life strategies in talassocratic countries, and by no means at the level of a solid ideology. Thus, a talassocratic civilization can easily integrate a tellurocratic one without changing its inner content at the level of individual economic projects, cash, raw materials, and labor markets, which will fit into its system-creating structure. But a tellurocratic civilization can by no means integrate a talassocratic one without changing its own inner content. In other words, for tellurocracy to integrate talassocracy the former must change the latter, imposing on it its principles of existence at the ideological level, thus turning it into an ideocracy.

GEOPOLITICAL AND CULTURAL POLITICAL DELIMITATION

Now let us correlate these two principles of delimitation: Atlanticism-Eurasianism and talassocracy-tellurocracy. Their limits do not coincide: the Atlanticism-Eurasianism confrontation is not an expression of the basic geopolitical cultural dualism of talassocracy and tellurocracy. While Atlanticism (with the US as its axis in the twentieth century) is an approximate geographical expression of talassocracy, Eurasianism (with imperial Russia at its core since the turn of the century, followed by the USSR) cannot be totally identified with tellurocracy. In the first place, numerous tellurocratic countries do not construct their policies on the concept of Eurasianism. On the other hand, Eurasia is a continent, a considerable part of which belongs to the Atlantic civilization. In fact, Eurasianism as a concept of tellurocratic expansion within talassocracy inherently exaggerates its own influence on the continent and inner cultural schism.

The same is true of Pan-Slavism. All attempts to convince the Slavic countries that they have brothers in Serbia, and precisely these Slavic brothers of ours are committing an act of ethnic genocide, do not withstand criticism. This does not mean that Ukraine should automatically join the Anglo-Saxon or Roman-Germanic side. It means that with which side Ukraine as a polity should show solidarity cannot be decided based only on remote linguistic affinity (or that we are all White). Ukraine's solidarity with other countries is possible only within the context of our cultural values. Ukraine has itself suffered considerably from ethnic purges and enemy bombs. From the standpoint of our culture, we side with no one in the conflicts between the Atlantic and Eurasia, so in this sense one ought not to reproach our politicians for being mistaken.

The process underway in Ukraine could be described as gradually building and movement toward a talassocratic civilization. By choosing talassocracy - and we stress talassocracy in the sense of culture, not geopolitical space (Atlanticism) - it simply resumes its age-old historical stand, that of its culture at the period of Kyiv Rus. For Ukraine this choice is only natural; it wants to revive its historical memory, the time when it existed as a polity long before Muscovy and all those Slavic alliances. Actually, this is what compels us to insist not so much on geopolitics as on chronopolitics and cultural politics, identifying Ukraine with certain periods in the past and future, its self-realization within a certain culture. In other words, Ukraine should identify itself with the period and culture when we had our own state formation, the period of Kyiv Rus.

The culture of Kyiv Rus was talassocratic, essentially distinct from the tellurocratic culture eventually imposed on it by Russia when we found ourselves exposed to its powerful geopolitical influence and had to live for centuries contrary to our innermost archetypes of individualism, enterprising spirit, possession of individual values, mobility of our ethical and legal norms. The identification of Kyiv Rus as a talassocracy is due to the strong influence on it radiating from Greece and the Byzantine Empire as classical talassocratic (maritime democratic) polities. Kyiv Rus expanded by spreading this southern maritime influence. Russia's influence was always strictly continental, first directed eastward, against the Horde, and then invariably associated with countless vain attempts to redirect it westward. Peter I, trying to change his country's cultural characteristics, sought above all access to the sea. Incidentally, this is why the Crimea is important for Ukraine not so much in the geopolitical or economic sense as that of cultural politics.

Ukrainian nationalism of the nineteenth century emerged as a reaction to the cultural difference between Ukraine and Russia. This archaic nationalism is superficial, while the cultural differences are deep-going, their roots are to be found in archetypes, in what many now call mentality. For this reason, in the cultural political sense nationalism will invariably be limited; here it can encounter linguistic differences with the rest of the Slavic world and territorial ones with the rest of Eurasia (on the side of Atlanticism). Nationalism is not a mainstream concept in Ukrainian cultural politics. This country currently experiences not a national but cultural confrontation - or a cultural-political one, to be precise. We have not two nations confronting each other, but two cultures.

UKRAINE'S HISTORIC CHOICE

In the sense of cultural choice, Ukraine is at a crossroads, and its geographical perspective depends on taking the right path. It can either choose talassocracy here and now, join the Atlantic civilization, struggle for markets, cultural expansion, and take part in a strategic duel with Atlantic countries, or remain tellurocratic., following in Russia's footsteps, bound by its contradictory Eurasianism, and move toward talassocratic civilization together with Russia. This should be understood precisely as our cultural choice, which we must make consciously and of our own free will. There is nothing coercive or compulsory about this choice. Choosing Russia is not unavoidable, nor is choosing talassocratic civilization.

Note that the issue is not that Ukraine should join a stronger polity, as is often alleged in Russia. It is just that Ukraine should make its choice, adopting values its civilization long ago accepted and suffered for: individual entrepreneurship, professionalism, corporatization, a law-governed state, effective legislation, mobile ethics and culture, procedures allowing peaceful maintenance of civil accord (what we call conventionalism). It is not a choice in favor of stronger countries but dearer values, not a choice against a weak Russia but against weaker values leading to stagnation and bondage, ethico-legal repression, and physical destruction of large numbers of people in the course of continuous civil wars. Eurasianism is unable to achieve and maintain accord other than in the form of a totally repressive totalitarian ideology (whether class or national-patriotic). Eurasianism means a war of cultures, continuous hostilities between culturally opposed groups within civil society, culminating in civil war. The Ukrainian politicians campaigning for Eurasianism should be aware that they are leading their people toward war.

From the standpoint of cultural political priorities, we must revise all Ukraine's foreign political initiatives and existing preferences. What precisely do we understand by Ukraine's European orientation? To us, Europe is not just a certain continental space, not a certain number of polities within this space, but a talassocratic culture. Thus, in the sense of trade or general foreign economic aspirations, our orientation can be aimed in whichever direction, not only toward Europe (what we know as multivectoral policy). But in the cultural sense we must be oriented precisely toward that talassocratic civilization. The latter is heterogeneous, as European Atlanticism is distinct from North American Atlanticism (in the extent to which the state intervenes in the economy, nuances in corporate policy, social guarantees, different levels of cultural openness, equal opportunity, its ethic of clan solidarity, etc.). We understand the spirit of the culture of these countries, yet we do not accept their politics. Agreeing with talassocratic cultural values does not mean accepting NATO politics or those of any of its member states.

Just as Kyiv Rus was falling into decay it faced the same choice. It made the wrong one, because of which the irresolution and shortsightedness of its elite cost us centuries of slavery. We must fully comprehend the scope and implications of today's choice. We could end up like our ancestors did or receive a powerful impetus in raising Ukraine to a higher level. In any case, the consequences of our choice will amount to a cultural development strategy that will last for centuries. We must have a clear vision of the level of this choice; we are not choosing between the United States and Russia (either might not even exist in 200 years), but between Europe and Asia (because their purely spatial isolation is bound to disappear with time). It is not a choice between Atlanticism and Eurasianism (because the latter concept has no positively understood, single cultural content). We are choosing between two types of culture, two cultural types of civilization. One of these types will still exist 200 years later. Therefore, our geopolitical choice extends for decades and our cultural political one for centuries. We live at a time when a choice has to be made meant not for decades but for centuries.

Atlanticism is as anachronistic as Eurasianism. Both belong to the twentieth century. Atlanticism, built on the doctrine of geopolitical confrontation, has outlived itself. In fact, this is precisely why Ukraine should stay out of the confrontation mentioned earlier; it lays no claims to any parts of the continent. Ukraine must consider its choice not in terms of Atlanticism or Eurasianism, but in terms of talassocracy and tellurocracy. Its policy is a cultural political, rather than geopolitical choice. Its domestic situation is basically marked by a weak and irresolute Ukrainian elite and the absence of unity or desire by this elite to conduct an open dialogue on the subject.