After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russians, in search of an identity to unify their still vast country, are reevaluating a movement of the 1920s, Eurasianism. Why is Eurasianism attracting Russian attention again today? The main reason may be that Eurasianism, in designing an idealistic State system, took into account the unique spiritual, cultural and psychological factors of Russian history. This paper aims to make clear the spiritual foundations of Eurasianist thought.
Eurasianism views the Orthodox Church as a spiritual foundation able to unite the whole Eurasian world. However, could the Orthodox Church really provide a common spiritual foundation for the vast cultural range of the various Ural-Altaic ethnics? To this question Eurasianists answer: “The ideal of Orthodoxy is a symphonic, organic and sobor-like unity of various religions.” The expression sobor-like unity derives from the Russian theological term sobornost, which signifies the central concept of the Orthodox Church, whereby the individual shares corporate life and unity, while retaining personal freedom.
With this concept of sobornost they insist that the aim of Orthodoxy is not to erase the individuality of each pagan religion and Russianize it, but to create a symphonic world made up of various sounds. In support for this position, they say that there exists some similarity between the spirituality of Orthodoxy and some Eurasian pagan religions, including Buddhism.
This similarity could be summed up in terms of the contiguity of the pantheism of religions such as Buddhism and the panentheistic tendency of Orthodoxy. Panentheism is the belief that the Being of God includes and penetrates the entire universe. The Orthodox Church, which does not draw a sharp boundary between Nature and Grace, (a characteristic marvelously described in the words of Elder Zosima in the The Brothers Karamazov, ) is indeed panentheistic.
When Eurasianists explain the peculiarity of their own culture and of the State system plan based on it, they use the key-concept symphonic personality (lichnost) . Lichnost is often translated as personality or individual, but this notion, which is obviously influenced by Orthodox ideas, is quite different from the usual Western meaning of individual. In Orthodoxy lichnost (the real personal Self) can be achieved only when it is opened to the whole, so it does not oppose the whole, rather it is enriched by it.
The society of symphonic personalities is an idealistic organic united whole of plurality. However, Eurasianists also insist that it is a society where various levels of symphonic personalities are hierarchically united. This suggests that the smallest unit of lichnost, which is individual, might have the least autonomic value of itself. Berdyaev severely criticized the idea of symphonic personality, considering it a metaphysical foundation for human slavery.
When we read the Eurasian project of a new State governing system named“iheocracy, ”we have to agree with Berdyaev's criticism of the“utopian etatism.”This is because“iheocracy”reminds us of theocracy on the one hand, and of the Soviet totalitarian system on the other.
The idea of the symphonic personality comes from the idealism of sobornost and the tradition of philosophy of Unitotality. Eurasianists, in order to overcome the defects of both individualism and totalitarianism, eagerly searched for the symphonic unitotal community, but we have to say that the too hasty attempt to realize it“here and now”on earth, without due consideration of the moral cultivation of each individual, generates a serious danger of Utopianism.

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During the interwar period, several thinkers and politicians intellectually challenged the so-called “Western state system”—an international order comprising nation-states. Some of the ideas, such as Coudenhove-Kalergi's “Pan-Europe” or Aristide Briand's “the United States of Europe” bore fruit later on in the form of regional integration. Other ideas failed or simply vanished into oblivion.
In this paper, I examined and reevaluated Russia's Eurasianism as one of those challenging ideas that advocated the significance of a “region” to overcome the antagonism derived from the nation-state system.
Eurasianism, which emerged among Russian émigrés in the 1920s, is usually regarded as a variation of Slavophiles in Russian intellectual history. However, on the basis of Eurasianists' various descriptions of contemporary international relations, one can elicit their critical view toward the nation-state system. As is often said, the concept of a nation-state which originated in Western Europe presumed national homogeneity within a particular territory. However, many other parts of the world such as Russia are actually multinational regions. According to Eurasianism, Europeanization (nation-building modeled on Europe) leads to the destruction of the inherent diversity in the region. Therefore, they attached considerable importance to Russia's national and cultural diversity. Moreover, this is the reason why they named Russia as “Eurasia”: Russia's vast region had served as a place of exchange between Europe and Asia through its history. They believed that, as a result, it fostered a multicultural character. In their viewpoint, “Europe” meant homogeneity and “Eurasia” meant diversity in contrast.
With this notion as a background and focusing on the ideas during the interwar period, it can be stated that there are many similarities between Eurasianism, Pan-Europeanism, and even Asianism in Japan. Regardless of the differences in the context, they all emerged as a criticism to the concept of a nation-state and to modern international relations.
Of course, Eurasianism was different from Pan-Europeanism in some respects. For example, mentioning a map (an appendix of the book Pan-Europe), one Eurasianist criticized that Coudenhove-Kalergi's “Pan-Europe” was an expression of colonialism, because his “Pan-Europe” included colonies in Asia and Africa. Another Eurasianist pointed out the practical difficulties in European integration. In short, Pan-Europeanism reflected the interest of victorious European states after World War I.
With regard to the criticism of the modern nation-state, the Soviet Union also appeared as a challenger. Eurasianism held a positive opinion on the federalism which could be a suitable governing system for the multinational region. However, on the other hand, they found internationalism and the rule by the Communist Party to be equally dubious.
During the 1990s, immediately after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, we witnessed Eurasinism being revived in Russia. It was certainly the consequence of an “identity crisis”; however, at the same time, a reexamination of the regional concepts was a simultaneous phenomenon worldwide. “Eurasia” as well as “Europe” and “Asia” were reconsidered under the new circumstances that arose in the transitional period.

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