EURASIATISM: A PROPHETIC MOVEMENT

Von Ungern-Sternberg

Between Asia's Revenge  and Theocracy

Между реваншом Азии и теократии

Fra rivincita dell' Asia e teocrazia

Entre revanchisme asiatique et théocratie

Zwischen asiatischem Revanchismus und Theokratie

The ambiguous role of Scythians, who, as observed already by Herodotus, were partially a wild warlike people of the steppes, and, from another side, an integral part  of the European family of peoples, was broadly utilised as a metaphor for describing the Russian people itself. A literary circle was created under the denomination “the Scythians” by authors like Blok and Ivanov-Razumnik. Blok’s poem “Skify” summarised this point of view.

Blok’s “Skify” includes a quotation of Soloviov’s “Panmongolism”,devoted to the same subject: 

“Pan Mongolism! The name is monstrous 

Yet it caresses my ear

As if filled with the portent

 Of a grand divine fate.  

While in corrupt Byzantium 

The altar of God lay cooling 

And holy men, princes, people and king

Renounced the Messiah -  

Then He invoked from the East 

An unknown and alien people, 

And beneath the heavy hand of fate 

The second Rome bowed down in the dust.

We have no desire to learn 

From fallen Byzantium's fate, 

And Russia's flatterers insist:

 It is you, you are the third Rome.  

Let it be so! God has not yet 

Emptied his wrathful hand. 

A swarm of waking tribes 

Prepares for new attacks.  

From the Altai to Malaysian shores  

The leaders of Eastern isles 

Have gathered a host of regiments 

By China's defeated walls.  

Countless as locusts 

And as ravenous, 

Shielded by an unearthly power 

The tribes move north. 

O Rus'! Forget your former glory:

The two-headedeagle is ravaged, 

And your tattered banners passed 

Like toys among yellow children.  

He who neglects love's legacy, 

Will be overcome by trembling fear...

And the third Rome will fall to dust, 

Nor will there ever be a fourth.” 

The “Scythic” movement was, under a certain point of view, an anticipation of the Euro

-Asiatist orientation, which saw, in Russia, a particular kind of civilisation, 

sharing, partially, the European Identity and, partially, the Asiatic one.

In fact, the idea of Eurasiatism derived from concrete convergence between exoteric learnings, like the ones of Blavatsky, Rerih and Gurdjev, “White” warlords, like Semionov and von Ungern-Sternberg, and Japanese politicians and military, like Ugaki Kashunige. These theses resembled also the ones of the Japanese historian Shiratori.

Semionov and von Ungern Sternberg tried to create an independent Mongolian power and to restore the Qin Dynasty in China, as instruments for launching a worldwide monarchistic counter-offensive against the forces which were destroying the Chinese, Russian, Turkish, German and Austrian empires. 

It has also to be recalled that the Qin Empire, which had just been dissolved in 1911 but was restored for a very short period in 1917, was a multiethnical empire dominated by the “Peoples of the Steppes” (Manchu, Mongols, Uighurs and Tibetans). For this reason, the paradoxical pretention of von Ungern-Sternberg (a German-Baltic Russian citizen born in Austria), who, being the ruler in Urfa -Ulaan Bator-) , claimed to be a reicarnation of Chingis Khan, was no absurd as it could be considered now. The Dalai Lama himself proclaimed him even as a reincarnation of the God Mahahkala. In any case, in that period, warklords were struggling, in Russia, in Germany, in Hungary as well as in China and in Central Asia, to restore the ancient Empires.

The best known Eurasiatist author was Prince Trubeckoj, who, writing, in the ’30^ies, in Harbin (Manchuria), Sofia and Prague, and following the above suggestions both from Russian and Japanese cultures, emphasized the Mongol and Tatar heritage in Russian identity (“Nasledije Chingis Khana”), challenging the “arrogance” of Western Europeans, who, according to him, had always refused to recognize the dignity of civilisation to the cultures of Eastern Europe and of the steppes. In so doing, Trubeckoj utilized not only the ideas of the Scythic movement, but also the ones of other admirers of the Peoples of the Steppes, like Enver Pasha.

These ideas were not so insulated. They echoed the theories of British and Russian diplomacies, struggling, along the XIX Century, to control Persia and Afghanistan, as the key to the whole Asia. Kiplings work, and the British "inventor" of Geopolitics, Mackinder, thought that those who had the control of Central Asia had the control of the world.

Also today, the followers of Mackinder, such as the American democratic politician Zbygniew Brzerzinski, maintain that the control of Central Asia is pivotal for the control of the World. This has been a focal argument in favour of the wars in Afganistan.  

It is clear that, in general terms,  “Euro-Asiatism” stressed the role of the Peoples of the Steppes in the creation of the Russian identity. The brand “Eurasiatism” has been invoked for covering several different types of cultural and of political discourses, going from a natural, imperial and hegemonic role of Russia in the Eurasiatic continent, to the need of a federation of all peoples of Eurasia, up to simple remembering, to Europeans, of their Asiatic origins, thus challenging “West-European arrogance”, and fostering a dialogue with Eastern cultures.

Today, when several peoples of Asia are in the forefront of  the transformation of world economy, so that the balance of power is shifting eastwords across the Eurasiat Continent, the ideas of Eurasiatists seam to yeald a renewed success.