RUSSIA: If, as expected, Ukraine votes on St Stephen's Day to cast its lot westwards, Russia will look to the east, writes Daniel McLaughlin
The Bolshevik Revolution mesmerised and appalled the poet Alexander Blok and he, in turn, was despairing and disdainful of Europe's rejection of the new Russia.
"We shall take to the wilds and the mountain woods/Letting beautiful Europe through/And as we move into the wings shall turn/An Asiatic mask to you."
Blok's great 1918 poem, The Scythians, invoked Russia's enduring, Janus-faced attitude to the world and to itself: stretched across Europe and Asia, touching the Baltic and Pacific, at once covetous and scornful of the West's values and friendship.
Faced with the prospect of Ukraine cosying up to the EU and US after its contentious election on December 26th, President Vladimir Putin appears ready to look to Asia for a counterbalance to Russia's declining influence in the West. Far from just tapping into the age-old ambivalence of Russia's Eurasian identity, however, Mr Putin is looking to parry the increasingly forceful political, economic and military thrusts of Washington and Brussels into the underbelly of Moscow's old empire.
As the "rose revolution" tore Georgia from Russia's grasp last winter, its orange successor seem likely to usher Mr Viktor Yushchenko into power at the expense of an overtly pro-Russian candidate whom Mr Putin personally endorsed.
His embarrassment at backing the probable loser of Sunday's election rerun is dwarfed by the potential consequences of seeing Ukraine choose a future guided by the EU and NATO rather than Moscow. Ukraine and its 50 million-strong market is vital to Putin's plans to create an economic union among former Soviet states and to maintain a buffer between Russia and the eastward expansion of both Brussels-based blocs.
Without Ukraine, Mr Putin's proposed post-Soviet club takes on a strongly Asiatic air: the struggling Belarus of President Alexander Lukashenko - dubbed "Europe's last dictator" - would be its only other European member, with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan tipping the balance towards Central Asia. Not only do the five so-called 'Stans still do most of their business with Moscow, but their leaders see something comfortably familiar in Mr Putin increasingly authoritarian rule.
Since coming to power in 2000, he has overseen the destruction of independent national television; the emasculation of political opposition; the weakening of civil society; the rigging of regional elections and the reassertion of state power over swathes of the economy. Mr Putin's Russia shares these features with the states of Central Asia.
The kind of "people power" which drove the Georgian revolution and the vertiginous rise of Mr Yushchenko has sent a shiver through the halls of Russian and Central Asian power.
Mr Nursultan Nazarbayev, the veteran president of oil-rich Kazakhstan, said this month that "political stability, discipline and order" were more important than democracy "for an Asian state like ours".
Mr Putin also puts great store by those values, but his ambition to restore global-power status to Russia means he cannot be satisfied with simply swapping tips on political longevity with his Central Asian allies.
That may be why he sought to gloss over his Ukrainian reverse with high-profile visits to India and Turkey - after visiting China in October - all major players in an Asian world which Mr Putin has periodically courted during his time in office.
India is the biggest buyer of Russian arms and plans to help Moscow develop a supersonic missile and new aircraft; Turkey arrested several Chechen militants ahead of Mr Putin's arrival and shares the Kremlin's strategic interest in Caspian Sea oil and gas; China has vast potential as a consumer of abundant Siberian oil.
Mr Putin also made a sharp political point to Washington while in New Delhi.
"We think attempts to remodel the God-given diversity of modern civilisation according to the barrack-like principles of a unipolar world are extremely dangerous," he said, condemning attempts to disguise a dictatorial foreign policy "in nice, pseudo-democratic rhetoric".
But Russia and its Asian allies dare not embrace too hard or for too long, not only because of lingering mutual mistrust but because they all need the United States more than they need each other.