To underline the determination C Level Contact List of his country. In view of the recent escalation in Ukraine, this threat was clearly more serious than many in Europe wanted to believe at the time. Of course, all eyes are on the political and C Level Contact List economic implications of the deepening chasm between Moscow and Brussels. The immaterial aspects of the change in the Kremlin's international behavior receive less attention. Since the Crimea move and the debacle in eastern Ukraine, the political imaginary of Moscow's elites has C Level Contact List changed dramatically. Ultimately, it is a question of a mental distancing from Europe. Nothing documents this drastic change more clearly than a memorandum from 2014, which appeared in connection with the development of a new political-cultural concept.
Russia should be understood as a C Level Contact List unique and distinct civilization that can be reduced neither to the West (Europe) nor to the East," the authors wrote, adding bluntly: "In short, this thesis - confirmed by the entire history of the country and of his people – says: Russia is not Europe'. « A new world » During the last three or four C Level Contact List centuries, Russian interpretations of what is European and what is Russia's relationship with Europe have constantly fluctuated. In the era of Peter the Great, his court geographers and C Level Contact List historians played a decisive role in redrawing Europe's borders. By designating the Urals as the eastern border of Europe, they decidedly included most of the western territory of the Russian Empire within the old continent.
This type of mental mapping C Level Contact List served as a symbolic basis for the Europeanization policy promoted by both Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. In her acclaimed "Nakaz," her great "draft" of her 1767 policy, Catherine openly C Level Contact List declared: "Russia is a European state." For the next two centuries there was constant back and forth about whether and to what extent Russia was 'European'. But as the Soviet Union drew to a C Level Contact List close, the Kremlin seemed to have adopted the Catherine formula. One of Mikhail Gorbachev's favorite ideas was that of a 'common European home'. Boris Yeltsin spoke of a "return to.