There’s a line from Hamlet –“What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth and heaven?” It reminds me of Russia’s predicament today, Russia’s eternal predicament, crawling between Asia and Europe.

Russia has always felt itself to be at a crossroads between Asia and Europe, and always asked itself which course it should follow. It’s no different today, indeed, the dilemma informs the headlines most days of the week.

Last week Putin travels to Shanghai for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as Chinese officials say relations with Russia are at an all-time high. Yesterday [June 20], Rosneft teams up with Chinese oil companies to bring more of the oil sector under state control. Last month, the head of HSBC, Stephen Green, tells a Russia conference in London that the burgeoning Sino-Russian relationship is one of the most significant factors for 21^st century geo-politics.

On the other hand, last month, Putin meets with the leaders of the EU commission in Sochi. Last fortnight, he greets the World Press Association, which is dominated by Western journalists, in Moscow, and says he is committed to a free press. At the same venue, his likely successor Dmitri Medvedev says: “Russia’s place will always be in Europe.” Gazprom teams up with E.On, ENI, BASF and other European companies, in an attempt to integrate Russian markets more thoroughly with those of Europe.

Beneath the headlines, it’s a deeper schizophrenia. Putin said in his state of the union speech last year that Russia belonged to the European civilization and shared its values. But does it really? If you define Europe as countries in which there is a genuine political opposition, then Europe ends in Ukraine, and everything from Minsk east is Asia.

This is not to criticize Russia. Perhaps it is genuinely more comfortable with an Asian-style political approach, like that of China, where one party and one bureaucracy holds power, and there are no genuine elections to disrupt the steady course of the country’s development.

One Western foreign correspondent I know in Moscow says, rather surprisingly, that he actually thinks Russia should follow a more Chinese model. At the moment, he says, it’s just pretending to follow a Western model, and incurring the constant criticism of the West for failing to meet Western standards. That’s why it gets criticized so much more than China – because China never claims to be European or trying to meet European standards.

Russia, claims this correspondent, should for clarity’s sake abandon the pretence of being a liberal democracy, and honestly follow a more Chinese model, with a party of power and obvious limits on press freedom and civil rights.

I’m not going to argue whether this is a good idea or not. But I will argue that this will never occur, for the simple reason that, at a deep, emotional and non-rational level, Russians feel themselves to be Europeans, not Asians. They relate to places like Amsterdam, Paris, London, they feel at home in these places, they aspire to them. The same is not true of China, Japan, even of Сentral Asia.

I have a friend in a Russian news agency. He’s just been dispatched to Shanghai, to work on the ‘Year of Sino-Russian Friendship’ and liaise with Chinese journalists to try and set up meetings and interviews. I asked him if he was looking forward to his posting. “Not in the least”, he said. “My colleague has been working there, and they say it’s been a nightmare. No one speaks English, no one speaks Russian, they don’t even understand Latin script. It’s been impossible to communicate at even a basic level.”

This person, while being a Russian patriot, is also a deep Europhile. He loves to talk about London, about western pop groups, about French wine and so on. How many Russian Asiaphiles have you met, who can’t wait to visit Beijing, who long for the latest release from Jay Chow, who have the Chinese Flag on their shirts, like they do the Union Jack?

OK, the national diet of Russia is increasingly sushi. OK, Russians love the films of Wong Kar-Wai and the books of Haruki Murakami. But so does everyone. In political terms, Russian advances to Asia are only ever defensive. They only ever occur as reproaches or threats to the West, for failing to understand Russia or bring too quick to criticize it.

That’s why I don’t think Russia will ever relinquish its aspiration to join Europe, which means it will continue to uphold the window dressing of being a liberal democracy. Who knows – maybe it will pretend for so long it will finally become one!

But it will always sit a little uncomfortably at the European dinner table, because all the customs and manners of European politics – elections, free press, human rights – seem a little artificial and pointless to it. It will long to throw off the pretence, to embrace its inner Mongol and have done with stupid European conventions. But it will resist that impulse.  It will remain crawling between Asia and Europe, but in particular, crawling towards Europe.

Julian Evans, a British freelance journalist based in Moscow.

June 21, 2006