Russia in European context

A couple of months ago Stephen Kotkin took part in a seminar at Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. There he, among other things, said: “…Russia has nowhere to go. Russia could always go back to Europe because there was Angela Merkel, there was Germany, and they’ll take you back no matter how evil you are. And, you know, Wandel durch Handel.  But you can’t get back to Europe now if you’re Russia, you know why? ‘Cause Poland is in Europe now. And over my dead body is Russia coming back to Europe over Poland. Poland will never… Russia could become democratic. Yevgenia Markovna [Albats] could become president in Russia, and Poland will still say no on rehabilitation. And of course, the Estonians, the Latvians, the Lithuanians are right behind the Poles. And it’s not only the Poles, the Scandinavians are now on that bandwagon, but it’s mostly the Poles. So Russia has no pathway back…”

Today I stumbled upon a book written by a Polish feminist culturologist and film expert Ewa Mazierska, together with another academic researcher Laura Rascaroli. It’s titled From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities, European Cinema and it has a whole chapter dedicated solely to the cinematographic works of Pavel Lungin. There isn’t a single doubt that Russia is a natural part of Eastern Europe.

Twenty years ago things could be so different from today. And we all could go in a direction that was so much more promising…