A heady wind of change blew throughout Europe at the end of the 1980s and one might have thought that European history was experiencing a new birth. There was a sense of joy about a breakthrough into the future mingled with a sense of triumph associated with the attainment of a very important goal. People thought that nothing would stop them anymore from “living like the Europeans” now that Communism had fallen. It took years before people realized that the two attitudes were incompatible. The contradiction between the sense of a revolutionary event and the feeling of a materializing utopia has determined to a great extent the course of both European and global history over the past twenty years. In order to move beyond the impasse that democratic politics is in it is important to regain awareness of the unfinished and unpredictable nature of history. First, however, it would be useful to clarify how this awareness was lost.

THE MAIN IDEOLOGEME OF THE DAY

It is extremely risky to begin a discussion of the transformation of European policy with references to “The End of History” by Francis Fukuyama. Most readers are quite familiar with the contents of his article published in the summer of 1989, which eventually became much more famous than the subsequent book of the same title. As for Fukuyama’s critics in Russia, they have long lapsed into banalities. Still, it is not possible to ignore this text – not so much because of its originality, as its predictability. “The End of History” illustrates perfectly the post-modernist notion of “the death of the author”: while the emergence of a text of this sort was fully dictated by historical necessity, the fact that Fukuyama wrote it was entirely contingent. Had it not been Fukuyama, someone else would have produced it anyway.

It is well known that Fukuyama did not claim the role of a trailblazer. He quotes Hegel, who came up with the classical formula of the end of history, along with its best-known 20th century interpretation that can be found in the works of Alexander Kozhev. Fukuyama’s impact on the understanding of international relations in the United States has been largely overstated in Russia, as his work only partly correlates with the mainstream academic debates over the past several decades. In some sense, the subject of “The End of History” lies outside academic discourse and belongs to the sphere of ideology. As Fukuyama made an attempt to analyze the current situation, he de facto formulated the main ideologeme of the era. This is why he cannot be ignored in a discussion of the outcome of the “glorious twenty years.”

Unlike Marx’s Communist utopia, the idea of the end of history does not set any political horizons. It simply describes the current moment of time (or a future which can already be distinguished in the present), but this does make it less partisan: in the final run it leads to depoliticization. Fukuyama insists that all remaining contradictions and conflicts of global politics can be resolved in the framework of liberal ideology. The concept elevates liberalism to the rank of an absolute, supra-historical truth that sets the only correct vector for the development of all humankind. The case is not limited to abstract liberal values – individual freedom, for instance – and concerns the very concrete institutional and legal reality of Western European and North American countries. It appears that all the nations belonging to the Western political community have already found answers to all the fundamental political questions, while their less fortunate neighbors should give up their futile search and start copying Western models. Now the main tasks of democratic states or the ones moving towards democracy lie in the domain of governance, where the simple observance of procedures guarantees the results. The figure of the charismatic political leader is replaced with a red-tape technocrat who has a directive to follow in any possible case.

In Europe, this mechanism was set in full motion with the aid of identity policy. The restoration of sovereign national statehood in the former Socialist camp proceeded under the motto of reverting to the “genuine” European identity that has been preserved in spite of Communist oppression. Since a genuine Europe was identified with the EU and NATO, the fastest possible integration into Euro-Atlantic structures was essential for becoming full-fledged Europeans. Naturally, this integration implied certain conditions that were set forth by the “older Europeans.” Also, it implied a more or less exact replication of their legal and institutional norms. Appropriate mechanisms were built quite quickly. First, there was the Phare program and then the entire multistage plan of enlargement crowned with the Copenhagen criteria.

The technocratic machine of Europeanization was from the very outset focused on embracing the maximum possible number of countries bordering the European Union, including those that have vague prospects for accession even now. The Euro-Mediterranean dialogue is called upon to bring the countries of North Africa and the Middle East into the realm of Euro-Atlantic influence. Following the 1995 Dayton Agreements, the EU has played an increasingly active role in the Western Balkans. The European Neighborhood Policy, open to everyone, was supplemented in 2008 with invitations to former Soviet republics to join the so-called Eastern Partnership. The EU’s internal norms were presented as universal ones in all these situations. The starting point of the dialogue was the assumption that the rules accepted in the EU fit everyone, can have no alternatives and must be accepted by all candidates. This stance is not at all surprising since the universalization of the EU’s legislative system as a power resource is far greater than any other that Brussels can rely on. It is certainly more significant than military coercion (for which the EU does not have the necessary resources) or the management of capital flows.

A critical glance at pan-European provisions as a resource of power does not presuppose their reassessment in substantial terms. More than that, many of the principles advocated by the EU, the U.S., the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and other international actors on behalf of democratic states deserve being recognized as having truly universal value. I would put on this list freedom of speech; independence of the mass media; transparency in the operations of state power agencies; independence of the courts and the equality of all people before the law. The same examples, however, reveal the full measure of complexity of practical application of the norms that are  accepted by nearly everyone at the abstract level. Should freedom of speech cover attempts to proliferate racial hatred? Or can corrupt journalists make use of it? Or where is the border between ensuring the equality of discriminated groups and the infringement on the rights of the majority? Mixed cases and contradictions of all sorts emerging at the junction of differing norms form the subject of intense political debates in democracies today. Moreover, the intensity and fruitfulness of such debates show the true degree of democratic development in society. A true democracy is not an ossified system that produces answers in advance to all the possible questions. It is a never-ending search for a compromise between individual freedom and the existence of society as a sovereign whole.

The sensation of the end of history that enveloped the Western world in the late 1980s-early 1990s proved to be a disturbing symptom that testified to the loss of the ability for democratic pursuit and continued to undermine this ability itself. Along with other forms of “democracy promotion,” the EU’s enlargement propped up the illusion that the democratic countries themselves had accomplished everything and what remained to be done was to clean up the undemocratic backyards of civilization. That the triumph of democracy had degraded into a crisis became very clear on September 11, 2001, when democratically-elected governments started to shake off democratic freedoms very easily. It turned out that the majority of the political class and ordinary people put more value in a secure and safe existence than in the readiness to accept the challenges of a yet unknown future.

ONE MORE DISINTEGRATION OF A UNITED EUROPE

The depoliticization that was typical of the period immediately after the Cold War was not free of inner controversies. Access to Europe can be used as a resource of power only if two important conditions are met. First, the candidate country as a target object in the power relationship must strive to become a part of Europe, and importantly, into a Europe  personified by the wielder of power. Second, the right of the latter to define the criteria of European self-identity must not be questioned. It seemed at first that neither of the two conditions could raise any problems. A radical opposition to the choiceless Europeanization was only displayed by the Balkan nationalists, and the proponents of a united Europe targeted most of their efforts at appeasing the region. The problems of the democratic transition in other countries, like Russia under Boris Yeltsin, Slovakia under Vladimir Meciar, and Ukraine under Leonid Kuchma, looked temporary. There were no marked differences left in the world of victorious liberalism between countries and regions, except for the fact that some had already reached a brighter future and others were still moving towards it.

Yet the triumphant progress of democracy slowed down by the end of the 1990s. While the countries of Central and Eastern Europe became increasingly “Europeanized,” Serbia, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and many other post-Soviet countries were less and less inclined to follow the precepts of technocrats from Brussels. Where each of these cases has eventually led up to is a separate story; the causes of the “deviations” in each particular country require independent scrutiny. Let us single out just a few basic moments. In the first place, any references to the specificity of national cultures as the root causes of failures in democratization cannot be considered valid. There is no doubt that cultural differences do have political importance, but it is not these differences that predetermine development pathways for countries and nations. Russian researchers Alexander and Pavel Lukin indicate that both today’s German democracy and Nazism can, with an equal degree of credibility, be derived from the German cultural tradition. Similarly, the specific features of the Confucian culture provide a no less potent explanation for the past backwardness of countries making up that cultural area than for their subsequent technological breakthrough.

The qualitative difference between Russia and the countries that succeeded in riding the “third wave of democratization” should be sought, in the first place, in how Russians understand their homeland’s European identity. The “come back to Europe” formula, which implied the recognition of the EU’s and other Western institutions’ right to set the criteria of “Europeanness,” was not acceptable for Russia. The Russians found it all the more difficult to accept the role of a European apprentice because, for a number of historical reasons, their own social model had drifted much farther away from the European standards than, for example, the Estonian or Czech model. The path to the Europe incorporated in the EU was longer and more difficult for Russia than for other former member-states of the Eastern bloc. In addition, the new partners’ readiness to support the Russian transformation, measured by the size of financial aid per capita, was visibly lower.

Last but not least, accession to Western institutions was a symbolic step for all the new members of the EU and NATO. It symbolized their eventual liberation from the yoke of imperial oppression. Setting off Russia against Europe, democracy and civilization has become a political reality in the entire region, although its impact on the political process varies from country to country. The “color revolutions” showed that the specter of Russia can be exploited as an instrument for political mobilization even in countries where the new Russia initially was not associated with the gloomy Soviet past and where this past was not viewed as so gloomy.

Political mobilization through drawing contrasts between the new democracy and the authoritarianism of the past happened to take place in Russia, too, but it was much weaker and failed to live through the shock therapy. To follow the same course that its Western neighbors had opted for, Russia would have had to do something bigger than withdrawing from the Soviet Union together with the other republics. It would have had to secede from itself, to work out a new identity based on the rejection of the Soviet period of its history and, on a broader scale, of its imperial past. While other post-Soviet states that broke away from authoritarianism managed to retain their national historical narratives and rolled up the sleeves to modify and fortify them, Russia would have slid into a hole and would have had to start writing its history from scratch. The experience of postwar Germany shows that such a radical change in people’s mindset is possible, but it also demonstrates the scale of the upheavals that society has to go through in this case.

In a word, while the political class in Central and Eastern Europe deemed Europeanization under the EU’s diktat to be the simplest and most obvious course, it meant huge political costs for Russian politicians. Pro-Western Russian liberals paid a terrible price for their attempts to “return Russia to civilization.” Many of them are still accused of treachery, while mass consciousness paints the 1990s as a time of tumult and decay. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that the new generation of Russian leaders have turned to a different form of political thought that is no less typical of this country and that singles out Russia as a separate civilization. It must be emphasized that the ideas of independence and even “great powerness” do not imply a renunciation of the European choice. They simply mean that Russia is positioning itself as a different, alternative or even more genuine Europe and thus claims the right to independently define the criteria of belonging to European civilization.

There are plenty of concrete examples of political actions and processes based on the perception of Russia as the “genuine Europe.” Moscow’s policy towards the Baltic states can serve as a most characteristic one. Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius are constantly criticized for encroaching on the rights of their Russian-speaking population, for sympathizing with the neo-Nazis, for trying to revise the results of World War II, etc. The Baltic republics are accused of something much more significant than being hostile towards Russia – the charge is that they undermine common European values like human rights, denunciation of totalitarian ideologies and commitment to the Helsinki principles.

Among other examples one can cite the elevation of the victory over Nazi Germany into the fundamental event in national history (“The Soviet people saved Europe from Nazism”) or the concerns about the looming loss of identity by Europe (as a result of Americanization, the decay of high culture, the inflow of immigrants, etc.). Even when Russian ideologists mention sovereignty, national interests or the balance of power, these notions refer to the discussion of common European values and norms rather than the tradition of realistic foreign policy thinking.

The latter illustration is especially graphic as it highlights Moscow’s attempts to offer its own version of European normative order by directly challenging the European Union. There is no doubt that nationalism remains an integral part of the ideological field everywhere in the EU, but references to  national interest as a way of defining global geopolitical priorities are scorned as a sign of bad taste. When Russian politicians and diplomats speak about national interests, this sounds outdated at best. At worst, this is taken as a manifestation of imperialist ambitions. But the contention between the two Europes is not limited to the problem of nationalism or ways to overcome it. The fight for control over energy resources is also taking place primarily in the regulatory field. While Brussels uses the Energy Charter Treaty to promote its own model of energy market regulation to the neighboring regions, Moscow operates with notions like equal security of suppliers and consumers or reciprocity in the access to assets.

Especially heated debates flare up around the vital normative notions of our times – democracy, human rights, sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states. Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, the status of Kosovo, the conflict with Georgia and the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia – all these cases ultimately boil down to the question of who has the right to tell the difference between a legitimate regime meeting European values and a regime that is illegitimate, authoritarian and self-proclaimed.

The era that began as “the end of history” is ending with the emergence of a new boundary between the West and the East in Europe. Descriptions of this border as a new Iron Curtain or a reversion to the standoff between the two blocs are not quite appropriate, since they unreasonably limit the historical retrospective. Europe has been debating for several centuries – practically since the beginning of modern history – over what it means to be a civilized society. Larry Wolff, a U.S. historian, showed some fifteen years ago that the very notion of Eastern Europe came into being in the 18th century when European civilization began to be viewed as unique and universal. That is why it would make sense to stop talking about a resumption of the Cold War and to state the fact that Russia has again failed to escape the role of an outsider and a not-quite-European country at another spiral turn of social transformation. Like any social and cultural form, the era of Russia’s exclusion from Europe is not endless and will be over one day; this issue may even lose its pressing character (for instance, if the center of the global world shifts to Asia). Still, the current situation shows an amazing stability and we Europeans just do not have enough political imagination to eradicate this standoff. Technocratic Europeanization inspired by the illusion of the end of history did not open up any new intellectual horizons in that sense. This is why it did not have any chances from the very start of bringing about the unity of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals.

HISTORICAL DEADLOCK AND HOW TO OVERCOME IT

Even if the standoff between Russia and the EU as two normative projects signals a relapse of the old debates on European civilization, the debate is now taking on a new form. One more reason that makes talk about a return of the Cold War sound wrong is that today’s Russia, unlike the Soviet Union, is not putting forward any radical alternative to the Western model. In this sense, the Russian challenge to the U.S. global domination and the EU’s regulatory rule in Europe stands in a dramatic contrast to the Soviet ideology and the radical Islamism of today.

Although the post-Stalinist Soviet foreign policy was based on the principle of peaceful coexistence, this did not prevent serious preparations on both sides for a global nuclear war. The Soviet propaganda machine was reluctant to discuss human rights and stressed on every suitable occasion that working people can fully enjoy those rights only in the Socialist countries. The concept of common human values appeared in the Soviet vocabulary only after the start of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika. The same discussions continue today. For instance, while the current Foreign Policy Doctrine criticizes the “historical West” for striving to “maintain a monopoly over globalization processes,” it says nonetheless that “competition between different value systems and development models” is unfolding “in the framework of the universal principles of democracy and market economy.” In contrast to the Soviet era, the Kremlin administration agrees today that some universal standards of democracy, human rights and economic freedoms do exist. It generally recognizes, for instance, that in the U.S. and the EU these norms are secured much better than in Russia. Ideologists in Russia are extremely displeased only with what they consider to be prejudice towards Russia and the employment of double standards in a cynical political game. In spite of all patriotic talk about Russia’s “lofty spirituality” and its “special path,” Russian identity discourse remains focused on Europe and European values. Even if the pessimistic predictions come true and Russia leaves the Council of Europe, it will not have anything else to offer to the wider world than the very same idea of democracy – with the exception that this democracy may be “sovereign.”

In other words, all attempts to position Russia as an “alternative Europe” of some kind are part of the struggle for the existing ideological and political resources rather than a search for a radically different path. It may sound like a paradox, but the idea of the end of history has taken firm root in Russia too. In the beginning, we accepted the neo-liberals’ ideological clichйs almost literally and passionately embraced the idea of remodeling the country to fit these intellectually dismal schemes. The feeling of novelty and eventfulness of our time was gone right after we decided that the Washington Consensus had furnished us with answers to all possible questions. A brief period of enchantment with the West gave way to frustration over the poor results. The revolutionary spirit waned away to be replaced by anomie and apathy which found an ideological reflection in a revulsion against “Western democracy” and in a desire to revive the old good Soviet times.

Since it is impossible to make the clock of history tick backwards, Russian policies of the first decade of the 21st century are an amazing hybrid of modernization and restoration. On the one hand, most decisions are still made according to the recipes suggested by Western technocrats, as no alternative options are in sight. On the other, the political process increasingly reminds of the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev, with its one-party system, the propaganda monopoly over the mass media, semi-official xenophobia and a creeping rehabilitation of Stalinism. Not a single large-scale project is fully completed without giving grounds for the suspicions of megalomania, window-dressing and “elements of corruption”. It is quite clear that genuine global alternatives will not emerge from within contemporary Russian society. The non-conformist projects that do loom on the Russian ideological horizon – diehard racism, Orthodox fundamentalism or, last but not least, dogmatic Stalinist socialism – imply choosing between bad and worse.

If we really have a chance to extricate ourselves from the morass of depoliticization, new politics will not grow out of the depths of the Russian soul or from the intellectual toil of Kremlin officials. Nor will it be invented by the Western champions of democracy, who mostly share the stagnant worldview of their Russian counterparts and are preoccupied with the preservation of “stability.” Yet a spark may snap one day at the joint of these two ideological fields.

One of the most curious splits in global policy today lies between the pro-democratic hegemony of the West and that of its opponents who continue to observe the format of democratic discourse. The urge to criticize the U.S. and the EU for their failure to live up to the democratic standards is typical today not only of Russian politicians, but also of the leaders of such countries as Brazil, China and Venezuela. In most cases, their criticism is not without ground and therefore it has the potential of seriously undermining the Western monopoly to set standards and simultaneously facilitates the rise of democracy as a universal reference point. None of these countries, however, is capable of imposing a new monopoly, as they will not have enough political weight for this in the foreseeable future. As a consequence, the notion of democracy is still hanging in midair. The abstract idea lives on and continues to attract people worldwide, but its link to a concrete empirical reality is thinning. Hence there is no surprise over the extreme alarm that this tendency is causing among the proponents of “stability.” But if we reject the conservative position, we will clearly see that the current situation opens up new horizons, as it prompts a critical reassessment of the liberal democratic values.

If this account is true, the  prospect for democratic politics liberated from the need to endlessly refer to the Western models is turning into the most pressing issue of our time. The twenty years that have passed since the end of the Cold War suggest that international experience must be re-thought, with due account taken of local tensions and conflicts. The link between the abstract values of individual freedom and collective self-government, on the one hand, and the concrete historical situation of local society, on the other, should each time be established anew. It takes much civic courage and responsibility to return, again and again, to the roots of legal and political order, and yet this is the only way to push history out of the deadlock and impart meaning to politics again.