Rival power: Russia in southeast Europe

Extract

The breakup of the Soviet Union created fluidity across Eurasia. Post-Soviet states sought to put substance into their sovereignty. Central Europe hastened to rejoin the West. What about south-eastern Europe? This diverse and complex region comprises former communist countries and longstanding NATO members; Orthodox, Muslim and Catholic faiths; and Slavic, Turkic and other cultures. Russia had long sought influence there, but never controlled more than a small part of it. What has driven its policies, and with what success?

Dimitar Bechev's meticulous and comprehensive study is an excellent guide. Its central thesis is emphatic and persuasive: tropes of ‘Russia's traditional influence in the Balkans’ are misconceived and explain little. Such traditions do not exist: Russia's ties have always been far more ambiguous and variable than the clichés suppose. As Bechev notes, no less a Slavophile than Dostoevsky predicted during the 1877–8 Russo-Turkish war that ‘Russia never will have and never has had anyone who can hate, envy, slander, and even display open enmity towards her as much as these Slavic tribes … after their liberation they will begin their new life by asking Europe … for guarantees of protection … precisely as a means of defence against Russia’ (p. 9).