In Rossiia i Evropa (1869), the pan-Slavist thinker Nikolai Iakovlevich Danilevskii (1822–85) defined Europe as ‘a Western peninsula of Asia, initially distinguishing itself from it less than the other Asiatic peninsulas, but gradually, towards its extremity, more and more splitting up and partitioning itself’ (Danilevskii 1995: 47 / 2013: 47). The absence of any clear border explains why Europe and Asia define themselves in relation to each other (van der Zweerde 2007: 53f). From the European perspective, Russia has always been a partly frightening, partly fascinating, European Big Other. Often perceived as backward or barbarian, Russia has always impressed through its sheer size, natural richness (from furs to carbohydrates) and military force, moving deep into the heart of Europe at the end of two great wars (1815 and 1945). The opposition of a ‘barbarian’ Russia and a ‘perverted’ Europe is a simplification (Scheidegger 1993), but the two have frequently been each other's constitutive (outside) other. The construction of a barbarian Eastern Europe has been instrumental in the self-instalment of an Enlightened and liberal West (Wolff 1994; De Custine 1975 [1839]), while the construction of a perverted West has been equally instrumental in the Orthodox East's self-identification (Demacopoulos and Papanikolaou 2013).

One major factor in Russia's political history is indeed geography. The largely flat Russian lands are easily swept by cold winds from the North and by scorching heat and drought from the South. This makes agriculture vulnerable in spite of the fertile soil and explains the repeated famines. Russia's limited access to open sea accounts for its traditional fear of encirclement. Flatness, openness and a sparse population make it vulnerable to invasion from the Eastern steppes and, from the West, by Sweden, Poland, France and Germany, some of which have managed to reach Moscow (Polish forces in the sixteenth century, Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812), while others (the Wehrmacht in World War II) just failed.