Abstract
The post-Soviet Russian perceptions of East Asia discussed in the following chapters had roots in Russia’s past, particularly from the mid-nineteenth century onwards when Imperial Russia’s eastward expansion and influence reached its peak.1 Elements of Eurasianist, Economic and Multipolarity perspectives can be found among the Russian political and intellectual elite’s thinking towards the Far East in the latter half of the nineteenth century and also throughout the Soviet period. This chapter examines the evolution of elite perceptions from the nineteenth century to the first half of the 1990s. It further examines the underlying great-power theme that connected all these perceptions in the early post-Soviet period.
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Notes
Although Siberia was discovered in the late sixteenth century and the Pacific was reached in the eighteenth century, these were achieved by individual explorers. The Russian government did not express significant interest towards its Eastern territories and East Asia until the second half of the nineteenth century. Stephen Kotkin, ‘Introduction’, in Stephen Kotkin and David Wolff, (eds) Rediscovering Russia in Asia (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), p. 3.
See also R. Quested, The Expansion of Russia in East Asia 1857–60 (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya, 1968);
G. Patrick March, Eastern Destiny (Westport: Praeger, 1996);
and John Stephan, The Russian Far East (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).
The major founders of ‘Eurasianism’ were ethnographer Nikolai Trubetskoi and geographer Petr Savitskii. Mark Bassin, ‘Russia between Europe and Asia’, Slavic Review, vol. 50, no. 1, 1991, pp. 9–17; and Iver Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe, pp. 111–16.
ee also Dmitrii Shlapentokh, ‘Eurasianism: Past and Present’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 1997, pp. 129–51.
Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toward the Rising Sun, pp. 42–60. Ukhtomskii developed earlier thinking by Count Sergei Uvarov, Minister of Education under Nicholas I, who advocated Oriental studies and Russia’s civilising role in the Far East. Ukhtomskii’s views was part of the ‘Yellow Russia’ movement (Zheltorossiia) — itself a variant of the Asianists (vostochniki). Lukin, Bear Watches the Dragon, pp. 27–32; and
Milan Hauner, What is Asia to Us? (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 56–60. See also
Prince Esper Ukhtomskii, Czarevitch Nicholas of Russia in Siam and Saigon (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1999).
See Yulia Mikhailova’s, ‘Japan’s Place in Russian and Soviet National Identity’, Japanese Slavic and East European Studies, vol. 23, 2002, pp. 3–5, and ‘Images of Enemy and Self: Russian “Popular Prints” of the Russo-Japanese War’, Acta Slavica Iaponica, vol. 16, 1998, pp. 30–53. On the war see
Richard Connaughton, Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear (London: Cassell, 2003).
Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toward the Rising Sun, pp. 90–102; Lukin, Bear Watches the Dragon, pp. 53–6; and Alex Marshall, The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1800–1917 (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 95–107.
Marlène Laruelle, ‘The Orient in Russian Thought at the Turn of the Century’ in Dmitry Shlapentokh (ed.) Russia between East and West: Scholarly Debates on Eurasianism (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 26.
Andrei Amal’rik, Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1980).
Hauner, What is Asia to Us?, p. 59; and Marlène Laruelle, ‘“The White Tsar”: Romantic Imperialism in Russia’s Legitimizing of Conquering the Far East’, Acta Slavica Iaponica, vol. 25, 2008, pp. 113–34.
Cited from E. Sarkisyanz, ‘Russian Attitudes Toward Asia’, Russian Review, vol. 13, no. 4, 1954, p. 248.
Mark Bassin, ‘Inventing Siberia’, The American Historical Review, vol. 96, no. 3, June 1991, pp. 763–94.
David Kerr, ‘The New Eurasianism: The Rise of Geopolitics in Russia’s Foreign Policy’, Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 47, no. 6, 1995, p. 980.
Asahi shimbun, 28 April 1941, cited in John Stephan, ‘Asia in the Soviet Conception’, in Donald S. Zagoria (ed.) Soviet Policy in East Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 36.
Even during the Cold War when the Soviet Union shared a common ideology with some East Asian communist states, most of these regimes and indigenous communist movements tended to follow the Chinese model than the Soviet’s. In Vietnam’s case, geopolitical considerations were more important than ideology in its relations with both the Soviet Union and China. Gerald Segal, The Soviet Union and the Pacific (London: RIIA, Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 31–71.
On differences in post-Soviet Eurasianism see Andrei Tsygankov, ‘Mastering Space in Eurasia’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 36, 2003, pp. 101–27.
Igor Podberezsky, ‘Between Europe and Asia: the Search for Russia’s Civilisational Identity’, in Gennady Chufrin (ed.) Russia and Asia (New York: SIPRI, OUP, 1999), p. 46.
Kuhrt, Russian Policy towards China and Japan, p. 1. Since Japan was considered by the Russian foreign policy community as part of the West and not of Asia, the anti-Western elements of the Eurasianists were particularly hostile to it. Robert Miller, ‘Russian Policy Toward Japan’, in Peter Shearman, (ed.) Russian Foreign Policy Since 1990 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), p. 141. However, this distinction between Japan and China for the Russian elite became less marked in the late 1990s as the Westernisers’ influence dwindled.
Mark Bassin, ‘Expansion and Colonialism on the Eastern frontier’, Journal of Historical Geography, vol. 14, no. 1, 1988, pp. 7–10.
Sarah Paine, Imperial Rivals: China, Russia, and their Disputed Frontier, 1858–1924 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), pp. 49–97;
R. Quested, Sino-Russian Relations (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), pp. 71–7;
and Alexei Voskressenski, The Difficult Border (New York: Nova Science, 1996), pp. 48, 77–80.
See Steven Marks, The Road to Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991).
Robert Horn, ‘Soviet Policy in Southeast Asia in the Gorbachev Era’ in Pushpa Thambipillai and Daniel Matuszewski, (eds) The Soviet Union and the APR (London: Praeger Westport, 1989), pp. 60–6.
After the conclusion of a Japanese-Soviet trade agreement in December 1957. By 1978, Japan became the Soviet Union’s largest trading partner in Asia accounting for more than half its total trade with the region, though this constituted only 3.3 per cent of total Soviet trade. Kazuyuki Kinbara, ‘The Economic Dimension of Soviet Policy’ in Gerald Segal, (ed.) The Soviet Union in East Asia (London: RIIA, Heinemann & Westview Press, 1983), p. 103.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika (London: Collins, 1987), pp. 180–3. See also
Seweryn Bialer, ‘“New Thinking” and Soviet Foreign Policy’, Survival, vol. 30, no. 4, 1988, pp. 291–309.
Lawrence Woods, ‘Delicate Diplomatic Debuts: Chinese and Soviet Participation in the Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference’, Pacific Affairs, vol. 63, no. 2, 1990, p. 218.
For instance, in January 1992, licenses from the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations were required for the regions to export ‘strategic commodities’, including natural resources. Mark Valencia, ‘Playing Roulette with Russia’s Far East’, in Derek da Cunha, (ed.) The Evolving Pacific Power Structure (Singapore: ISEAS, 1996), p. 213.
Tsuneo Akaha, Pavel A. Minakir, and Kunio Okada, ‘Economic Challenge in the RFE’, in Tsuneo Akaha, (ed.) Politics and Economics in the Russian Far East (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 64–7; and Rozman, Northeast Asia’s Stunted Regionalism, pp. 107–11. See also Anatoli Adamishin, ‘The Russian Federation, its Constituent Parts, and International Relations’ and Nikolai Solov’ev, ‘Siberia and the APR’, International Affairs, no. 4, 1993, p. 25 and pp. 28–9 respectively.
Valentin Moiseev, ‘Russia and Korean Peninsula’, International Affairs, vol. 42, no. 1, 1996, p. 108.
Tsuneaki Sato, ‘Economic Relations between Russia and the Asia-Pacific countries’, in Chufrin, (ed.) Russia and Asia-Pacific Security, p. 106. Moreover, up to 80 per cent of Russia’s trade turnover with China in the early 1990s was accounted for by border trade. Jennifer Anderson, The Limits of Sino-Russian Strategic Partnership, Adelphi Paper no. 315, (Oxford: IISS, Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 32.
Pavel Felgengauer, ‘An Uneasy Partnership’ in Andrew Pierre and Dmitrii Trenin, (eds) Russia in the World Arms Trade (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 1997), pp. 98–9.
Cited from Bates Gill and Taeho Kim, China’s Arms Acquisitions from Abroad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 48.
See Suisheng Zhao, Power Competition in East Asia (London: Macmillan Press, 1997).
Odd Arne Westad, (ed.) Brothers in Arms (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
Douglas Stuart and William Tow, A US Strategy for the Asia-Pacific, Adelphi Paper no. 299, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, IISS, 1995), p. 4;
and Robert Ross, (ed.) China, the US and the Soviet Union (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1993).
Robert Legvold, ‘Russia and the Strategic Quadrangle’ in Michael Mandelbaum, (ed.) The Strategic Quadrangle (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1995), pp. 16–62.
Margot Light, The Soviet Theory of International Relations (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1988), pp. 280–4.
Inis Claude, ‘The Balance of Power Revisited’, Review of International Studies, vol. 15, 1989, p. 77.
Hans Morgenthau, Politics among Nations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), p. 173.
Some Western analysts have argued that East Asia is multipolar. Aaron Friedberg’s, ‘Ripe for Rivalry’, International Security, vol. 18, no. 3, 1993–4, pp. 5–33; ‘Will Europe’s Past be Asia’s Future?’, Survival, vol. 42, no. 3, 2000, pp. 147–59;
and Kenneth Waltz, ‘Structural Realism after the Cold War’, International Security, vol. 25, no. 1, 2000, p. 32. Others have argued that it is bipolar — the US and China.
Robert Ross, ‘The Geography of the Peace’, International Security, vol. 23, no. 4, 1999, pp. 81–118. Asian analysts, on the other hand, tend to see East Asia as multipolar.
Tan See Seng, ‘Great Power Politics in East Asia’, IDSS Singapore, Working Paper no. 27, July 2002;
and Kishore Mahbubani, ‘The Pacific Way’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 74, no. 1, 1995, pp. 100–11. For Russian views see Chapter 6.
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 98.
Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 1997), p. 22.
See Connaughton, Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear; Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toward the Rising Sun; and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).
On how the war affected the great powers’ perceptions of the NEA balance of power see Sarah Paine, The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Segal, The Soviet Union and the Pacific, p. 23. The complexity of the interwar regional balance of power is illustrated by Felix Patrikeeff, Russian Politics in Exile (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002);
and Jonathan Haslam, The Soviet Union and the Threat from the East, 1933–41 (London: Macmillan Press, 1992).
David Youtz and Paul Midford, A Northeast Asia Security Regime, Institute for East-West Studies, Public Policy Paper no. 5, (New York: Westview Press, 1992);
and Stephen Blank, ‘Soviet Perspectives on Asian Security’, Asian Survey, vol. 31, no. 7, 1991, pp. 646–61.
Cited in Kuhrt, Russian Policy towards China and Japan, p. 101. This was recognised since late Soviet times but took greater time to filter down through the Armed Forces. See Glaubitz, Between Tokyo and Moscow (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), pp. 179–81;
and William Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 155. For an overview of the alliance see
Viacheslav Bunin, Iapono-Amerikanskii Soiuz Bezopasnosti (Moscow: IDV, 2000).
Roger Kanet and Susanne Birgerson, ‘The Domestic-Foreign Policy Linkage in Russian Politics’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 30, no. 4, 1997, p. 341.
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© 2009 Paradorn Rangsimaporn
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Rangsimaporn, P. (2009). Continuities and Evolution in Russian Perceptions of East Asia. In: Russia as an Aspiring Great Power in East Asia. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230244740_3
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