Russia between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geographical Space

Gehört Russland zu Europa? Der Geograph hat die Antwort am ehesten zur Hand. Georg von Rauch We should remember that a geographical region is in the last resort an abstraction with a history which can sometimes tell us much about the past. Denys Hay Russia's position between Europe and Asia is once again a timely subject. On the most official level, it figures regularly in Mikhail Gorbachev's pronouncements on foreign policy: somberly invoked either in western capitals in order to press his vision of a “common European home” from the Atlantic to the Urals or in the Far East to affirm the Soviet Union's natural identity as an Asian country. At the same time, dissident intellectual circles in the Soviet Union have been expostulating upon the Europe-Russia-Asia juxtaposition for some years and frequently enough arrive at conclusions very different from those of the general secretary.