Europe and Russia: a history of a border still to be defined

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Russia can be seen as one of the most culturally fascinating countries. Positioned at the meeting point between Asia and Europe, it has, throughout its history, absorbed customs and political models from both continents. But do the borders of Europe also include Russian territory?

The dilemma of Europe’s eastern boundaries goes back to the Middle Ages, when Russia was not considered part of Europe in any sense. Only after the fall of Constantinople did the leadership of the Orthodox Church pass to the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which proclaimed itself the guardian of the Orthodox values inherited from Byzantium, defining itself as the “Third Rome”.

Peter the Great

In the eighteenth century, after the Treaty of Nystad, Russia experienced its first modernization reforms under Tsar Peter the Great, modeled on Europe. Returning from his travels in Europe, Peter I decided to build a modern state structure inspired by the eighteenth-century monarchies of France, Austria, and England. Saint Petersburg was reshaped architecturally to resemble European capitals; the army was reformed and made more efficient, proving its strength in wars against Sweden. In those years, fervent Europeanists such as the Abbé de Saint-Pierre even theorized a federation of European states that would include Russia— a country Montesquieu had considered barbaric only a few centuries earlier.

From that point on, Europe’s border was increasingly pushed toward the Ural Mountains, integrating the Russian Empire ever more directly into the Western balance of power. Rulers such as Catherine the Great and Alexander I are examples of leaders strongly aligned with a European model of pluralism.

Westernizers and Slavophiles

In the nineteenth century, Russian thinking about European society split into two currents: the zapadniki (“Westernizers”) and the Slavophiles. The former saw European society as the set of values Russia should move toward, as the natural continuation of the path opened by Peter the Great. The Slavophiles, by contrast, held a stance hostile to Western values, criticized for their extreme individualism; they promoted solidarity among Slavic peoples, emphasizing Russian tradition and its Orthodox Christian identity.

The Russian Revolution

With the Bolshevik Revolution and the end of the Russian Empire, relations between Russia and Europe deteriorated sharply, shifting the European border back to Russia’s own frontiers rather than the Urals. Revolutionary ideas, however, were not unanimously in favor of cutting ties with Europe. The clearest example was Trotsky, a committed Marxist internationalist who proposed a political union—a “United States of Europe”—in which Russia would take part, a proletarian alliance against global capitalism. This vision differed sharply from the Stalinist and Leninist positions that later shaped Soviet doctrine.

Lenin was skeptical about a United States of Europe, arguing that even if such a union allowed limited economic exchange, it would ultimately be nothing more than an alliance of capitalists aimed at dividing colonies and further exploiting humanity. Stalin’s view, meanwhile, strongly favored an autarkic “socialism in one country” and rejected Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. The Marxist-Leninist line adopted by Stalin became hegemonic first in the USSR and, after World War II, across Eastern Europe, further reinforcing the idea of a European division from Russia. Europe’s boundaries were thus defined by the “Iron Curtain,” which lasted until 1989.

Gorbachev, Perestroika, and Vladimir Putin

In 1987, in his book on Perestroika, Gorbachev broke with the narrative of a Russia separated from Europe. The former Soviet leader argued that Europe’s creation and history were deeply shared, including the contribution of Slavic peoples to the development of the continent.

After the end of the Soviet Union, there was a brief rapprochement between the newly formed Russian Federation and Western Europe, driven in part by a severe economic crisis and by the chaotic presidency of Boris Yeltsin—who laid the groundwork for the rise of one of the most influential political figures of this century: Vladimir Putin.

With Putin’s presidency in 2001, ideological rhetoric became centered almost entirely on Russian national, Slavic, and Orthodox values, under a leadership marked by strong nationalist statism. The Russian Federation promoted its autonomy by reaffirming the nation-state, positioning itself ideologically against the European Union’s model of limiting state and economic sovereignty.

In the early 2000s, Moscow maintained fragile relations with European countries. From 2004 onward, NATO and EU enlargement brought in former Soviet-bloc states such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and later the Baltic countries. For the Kremlin, the spread of liberal ideology and American influence amounted to an implicit betrayal of the promise not to expand NATO eastward. The ideology of the “Russian world” (Russkij Mir), framing Russian-speaking populations as belonging to Russia, began to take shape as a cultural and geopolitical response. The pro-Western “color revolutions” between 2003 and 2005 further destabilized international relations, deepening the demonization of the West.

The 2007 Munich speech

Vladimir Putin’s speech at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy in 2007, delivered at the invitation of Horst Teltschik, marked Russia’s official break from the European system it had briefly moved toward for a few years.

The Russian president forcefully denounced America’s eastward expansion through NATO and the indiscriminate use of violence by world powers in international relations, portraying Western expansionism as a threat to Russia’s security.

With that speech, a boundary line was drawn that is still widely treated as Europe’s dividing line today: the Russian and Belarusian border. This situation was further aggravated by crises in Georgia and Ukraine, and by Russia’s 2022 invasion.

Given the current, deeply troubled state of relations between Europe and Russia, we cannot make reckless predictions about the diplomatic future of the two sides. Still, we need to reflect on the sense of insecurity that has characterized Russia for more than a century, and on Putin’s rise to power as a direct consequence of that feeling.

From 1917 to 1989, Russia was subjected to interventions by European powers aimed at destabilizing and undermining the nation in pursuit of an anti-Bolshevik regime change. These interventions—though varying in form as time and relationships evolved—were a constant, producing fear and insecurity among the population. The emergence of leaders such as Stalin, his idea of “socialism in one country,” and the subsequent expansionism of Soviet imperial power were direct consequences of this climate. Under these conditions, national stability became the historical mission of the Russian Communist Party, which indirectly established a social pact with the population: security in exchange for freedom.

It is no coincidence that leaders such as Yeltsin and Gorbachev are widely criticized, since rapprochement with Western powers was perceived as a betrayal of that pact and a blatant submission. Putin’s rise was tied to his ability, from 1999 onward, to restore the social pact lost under the two previous administrations. It is important to remember, however, that Russian authoritarianism has deeper roots than post-revolutionary paranoia. Russia has a long tradition of dictatorship and power struggles at the top, stretching back to Ivan the Terrible. The country’s vast territorial expanse has historically been used to justify an authoritarian governmental structure, presented as the glue holding together a nation spanning two continents.

From Europe’s perspective—especially in the East—many countries lived under a dictatorship imposed by Moscow from 1945 to 1989. This contributed to the hostility that still persists today in former Soviet-bloc countries toward Moscow. Across Europe, the Cold War also familiarized Russia not only as something external to European affairs, but as a permanent adversary. We should also consider that after the end of global communism, many former Soviet republics and nations once under its control experienced a surge of right-wing extremism fueled by post-regime internal dissent. This proved useful to oligarchic elites, who consolidated power through fascist propaganda. These sentiments remain present in the social fabric of former European communist countries. Although often ignored in public debate, these nations are crucial to restoring peace on the continent.

Today, without taking the analysis above into account, it is impossible to understand either the politics of the Russian Federation or those of Europe. Without it, negotiations would be unworkable, raising ever higher walls—or, in the worst case, weapons. That said, for now we must confront the differences between the two systems, hoping that one day it will no longer be force that weighs most heavily on the diplomatic balance.

Europe and Russia: a history of a border still to be defined