“RUSSIAN DAY IN NATOLIN”

The speech of the Ambassador of Russia to Poland V.Grinin at the College of Europe
(April 17, 2009)

Mrs. Osniecka-Tamiecka,

Dear students and professors of the College of Europe in Natolin, distinguished guests!

It’s my great pleasure and honor to be here and to participate in the “Russian Day” in Natolin. I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to the promoters and organizers of such an interesting and important event, as well as to Mrs. Osniecka-Tamiecka for supporting this idea. I do believe that such initiatives as the “Russian day” can help you in learning more about Russia, its culture, its way of thinking and its substance.

However it is not an easy task. Many people in Russia and abroad have been trying for centuries to realize what this country is. You probably know about the famous dispute in Russia in the XIX century between the so called Russophiles and Westerns concerning the way the country should follow – a self-sustainable one or European, i.e. with Europe together. The most ardent thinkers obsessed with the idea of the russophilia, such as the famous Russian poet and diplomat F.Tutchev believed in the grandeur of Russia and in its exceptional predestination. Moreover, he wrote: “By the fact of its existence as such, Russia is denying the future of the West”. By the way it’s the same poet who once pronounced that Russia cannot be understood in a rational way.

On the other hand there were theories in the West that don’t foresee any place for Russia in Europe and even deny Russia’s right to exist. It is well known that the attempt to realize at least one of them triggered a tragedy of the II world war in the XX century.

But still what is Russia? Does it belong to Europe? From the geographical point of view, it is a huge country, one third of which is situated in Europe and two thirds – in Asia. However, the country’s population, its industrial, scientific and cultural potential are mostly concentrated in the European part of Russia which constitutes at least one third of the whole European continent.  

From the ethnical point of view Russia is predominantly a Slavic country. For example, according to the Polish mythology there lived once three brothers – the Slavs that roamed around Europe. One day they decided to split and one of the brothers Rus went to the east of the continent where he set up the Russian state (statehood). There are a lot of Finno-Ugrians whose ancestors were mowing just the other way around – from the Urals towards the centre of Europe and were settling down along the vast Russian territories. The most persistent ones finally reached Hungary, Finland and Estonia. Certainly there are a lot of people of the Asian origin in Russia. All in all we have more than 180 nationalities, peoples and ethnical groups that have been living for several centuries next to each other.

The Russians as the ethnical and racial group do not have the monopoly for the statehood. According to the representatives of the Eurasian scientific and philosophic concept that specialize in studying the phenomenon of Russia, our country has never had a monoethnical statehood throughout its history and exists due to participation of many peoples in the state establishment. So we learnt the rules of coexistence in multinational states and other human right standards not only from the recommendations and conventions of the Council of Europe.

It is not then surprising that the English word “Russian”, as well as German “Russisch” or French “russe” can be translated into Russian with three words of different meaning.

The word “Русский” as a noun means a representative of the ethnic Russian group, and as an adjective means everything connected with the Russian culture, language and spirit. For example, “Russian soul”, the Russian Orthodox Church.

The word Russian can be also translated as “Российский”, that is everything that somehow belongs to Russia as a country, namely the army, police, educational system or our Embassies.

And finally the third meaning – “Россиянин” which is used to name a citizen of our country.

Let us look at the problem from the cultural and historical angle. There are a lot of opinions and points of view. A prominent Russian scientist, historian of the 19-th century, representative of the Eurasian school N.Danilevskij used to differentiate Russian and European. He implemented the notion “the cultural and historical type” singling out Greek-Byzantine and Romanic German types. Another prominent contemporary Russian scientist, our late academician Lichachev used to say: “Organically containing European and Asian, Russia combines these two civilizations in its own way, and that is why it represents a separate, independent civilization”.

Anyway nobody can deny that Russia is part of the European civilization that has in turn common Christian roots. I doubt that somebody in Europe could seriously think otherwise. Because the contribution of Russia and the Russians to the common European culture and civilization is not simply noticeable, it is enormous. I don’t want to bore you with further details.

The social and economic factor is most frequently mentioned alongside with doubts about Russia’s belonging to Europe. Allegedly this was the point where we chose different ways. But these statements are very controversial. For example, let’s take our modern history. Socially oriented western European model that is nowadays dominant on the continent is the product of the European society development throughout the 20-th century. And this product contains not only the tragedy of the two world wars and the Cold war but also the experience of the USSR. The Soviet Union played a rather important role in this process: it was not only perceived as the “soviet threat” that united the West, it also stimulated the “socialization” of the economic development of the western part of Europe.

That is why proclaiming the aim of establishing socially oriented economy, new Russia proceeds from our common European heritage. This is another proof of Russia’s compatibility with the rest of Europe.

In other words, close bonds between Russia and Europe are evident. And though we remain a Eurasian country, we perceive and consider ourselves more like Europeans. And this perception predetermined our political and strategic choice towards Europe, towards very close relationship with it, up to joining our potentials. This is a deliberate choice. We realized it long ago that it would be much more difficult to solve our internal problems alone – starting from economy diversification to overcoming poverty and demographic crisis, not speaking of facing global threats of today’s world.

When someone speaks about joining efforts of Russia and Europe, he most certainly means the relations between Russia and the European Union. From the point of view of their political, economic, social and cultural potential they are the largest geopolitical formations on the European continent. However, Russia has never seen it as its aim to join the European Union. On realizing our European choice we cannot afford to forget that our country as a world power situated on two continents must enjoy enough freedom in assessing and pursuing our internal and external policy, we must keep the status and the privileges of the Eurasian state. Russia-EU partnership is one of our main priorities. However, it cannot be opposed to the relations with other countries and regions.

Of course you cannot fully understand Russia until you have a look at its close neighbors, environment. For us the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) area is not a “chess board” where we can play geopolitical games. It is a common civilizational structure for the peoples living here. It is the body that keeps our historical and cultural heritage. I will give you an example. This year we celebrate the 200-th anniversary of a brilliant writer, Nikolaj Gogol, who made a unique contribution to the European and world culture. He was Ukrainian by blood but he wrote in Russian both about Ukrainian and Russian reality. Do we have the right to split, to divide or to nationalize this heritage? That’s why we can’t agree when historically predetermined mutually privileged relations between the states of the former USSR are presented as some sort of “sphere of influence”. If we admit such logic, this definition could refer to many things. For example, the European Neighborhood Policy, “Eastern partnership” and many other projects of the EU, not mentioning NATO projects, decisions on which are taken without Russia and without the countries these decisions apply to.

Russia has privileged interests first of all in the relations with its close neighbors but they also have privileged interests in Russia. Not understanding this and trying to destroy everything that is based on the common objective history, on interdependency and interconnection of economies, infrastructure, culture and humanitarian spheres of life means to act against history.

Unfortunately there are still ideas of “containment” of Russia, isolating it outside Europe in some kind of civilization reservation until it admits common European values. Well, we have already spoken about setting up common European values and about Russia’s contribution to it. It’s more difficult to understand the promoters of the above mentioned ideas; they will certainly need time to overgrow them and to overcome psychological factors, stereotypes and backward thinking.

But the time and historical logic actually prompt the necessity of consolidation of European civilization in facing global challenges including the present economic crisis. More than that, this process should not only embrace Russia but also bring closer the USA which is another offspring of the European civilization. Let me quote here Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov: “Having arranged real cooperation in the “triangle” Russia – US – European Union, we could radically alter the nature of the whole historical situation in the world”.

Russia is ready for this.