Eurasianism and the Concept of Central Caucaso-Asia

Rethinking Central Eurasia 31
form of statehood that excludes the cult of nation, and politically promotes
diversity in Eurasia.
According to another classification, neo-Eurasianism also consists of three
trends. 64 A first trend is national ideocracy on an imperial continental scale; a
second is a continental Russian-Iranian alliance; while the third is economic
Eurasianism. The representatives of the first trend oppose liberal
Westernism and Atlanticism, and pose themselves the task of creating an
empire of Eurasian socialism. The second trend is based on a strategic
partnership between Russia on one side and Iran and Iraq on the other, which
as allies are opposed to Atlanticism and globalism, are skeptical of
Europeanism, and also have little in common with Islamic socialism,
European national-Bolshevism, and so on. The third trend concentrates on
the idea of Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbaev, aimed at restoring
economic cooperation among the former Soviet republics. 65
What are the main threats according to the Eurasianist trend of the Russian
geopolitical school? Is it a system that has cardinally different ideas about the
political and economic structure of a state, or is it simply aimed at building
an empire at any cost? In order to answer these questions, it should be noted
from the very beginning that the Eurasian model of structuring the state,
public life, and the economy, not to mention so-called Eurasian values,
differs greatly from the generally accepted models and values. 66 In addition,
the question of Russia-Eurasia’s integration into a single civilization has not
been at all futile for the Eurasianists. 67
The theory of a Eurasian state is based on a construct essentially different
from that of a law-based state. Building on the understanding of the people,
the state, and society as integral natural entities, Eurasianism develops the
theory of a “mandatory state” as an alternative to a “law-based state.” It
64
See, for example, Nartov and Nartov, Geopolitika, pp. 148-149.
65
Ibid., p. 149.
66
According to the Eurasianists, the structure of the state, public life, and the economy
should rely on the conciliation and communality of Russian society, which, as Emil
Pain rightly notes, is only a myth (E.A. Pain, “Osobyy put Rossii”: inertsii bez traditsiy
[Russia’s Special Way: Inertia Without Tradition], Preprint WP14/2008/01 (Moscow:
Izdatel’skiy dom GU VshE [State University Higher School of Economics Publishing
House], 2008), p. 18).
67
See, for example, Utkin, “Evraziyskaia tochka zreniia.”