Lorenzo Maria Pacini
In Eastern Europe, there is a rise in Euroscepticism and disillusionment with the liberal democratic system and the values that the EU and the US are committed to defending.
Roles and players
Traditionally, in Russian geopolitics, after 1989, Eastern European countries were considered an area of direct Atlanticist influence. Russia's influence in these countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union has drastically diminished, and the resentments of recent history and the claims made against Russia, now in the form of a Federation, by the leaders of these states have not fostered further improvement in relations. The elites of Eastern European countries, with the exception of Serbia, which only joined this trend in the 2000s, have embarked on a rigorous path towards NATO and EU membership.
With integration into European and Euro-Atlantic structures, direct contact with the West has also caused an opposite trend. The masses were not ready to integrate into a Western socio-cultural system that was too 'sensual', and the role of these countries in world politics has become too dependent on the interests of the United States and Western European countries to satisfy both the elites and the possible counter-elites.
We will try to explore the variations of European nationalism, revisited in a populist key, and the more or less distorted approaches to multipolarism that have emerged in recent years, thanks to interpreters and mediators.
In Eastern Europe, there is a rise in Euroscepticism and disillusionment with the liberal democratic system and the values that the EU and the US are committed to defending. The image of Europe, as Western researchers themselves observe, is losing its appeal for Eastern Europeans. In the context of the economic crisis that erupted after 2008, declining confidence in the EU has become a common phenomenon throughout Europe.
The driving force behind the growth of the influence of populist movements and their leaders, who in the first decade of the 21st century gained the support of a significant part of the population of Eastern European countries, was precisely this distrust of liberalism, the search for other values, the search for a strong leader who would take full responsibility for solving the problems that had emerged. These sentiments in Eastern European society correspond to a tendency to preserve and defend traditional values, which is much more pronounced than in the more 'western' and northern countries of the European continent.
The authors of the INION RAN collection "Nationalism and Populism in Eastern Europe", published in 2005 - the year in which populist parties in Eastern Europe recorded significant electoral victories in Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland, while in Romania all three major parties adopted populist rhetoric in their programs - point out that the popular support and success of nationalist and populist movements do not stem primarily from ethnic issues, but rather from unresolved social problems, the conflict between so-called "European values" and the traditional values of Eastern societies, and the inability of Western Europe to truly integrate Eastern countries. Moreover, Eastern Europe has historically played the role of the "Other" in relation to the West, serving as a contrasting element in the construction of Western European identity. The process of integrating Eastern countries into European structures has only reinforced this trend.
Eastern Europe as an alien but contiguous element
After World War II, the Other became Europe's own past-a past of war and violence-from which the modern European project wanted to distance itself in order to build a future of peace and progress. However, with the fall of the Iron Curtain, there was a sort of spatial transposition of that removed temporal Other, which was projected onto the countries of Eastern Europe. In them, Western Europeans sought and found everything they had denied in themselves: aggression, corruption, nationalism, authoritarian tendencies. The result was an attitude of superiority, a refusal to recognize Eastern Europeans as their equals, and a desire to "re-educate" them by imposing models of good governance. The inhabitants of Eastern Europe, on the other hand, perceived themselves as full members of the European community. This contradiction gave rise to a profound disenchantment with modern Europe, its ideals, and its paternalistic attitude.
It makes sense to argue that the geopolitical and sociological study of Eastern Europe should more systematically adopt the methods of postcolonial theory, not because these countries were actually colonies, but because a particular condition has arisen in which Eastern Europe, like the former Western colonies, has been incorporated into the Orientalist discourse. Eastern Europe therefore remains an internal "Other" for Western countries, while the external "Other" is represented by Muslim countries (primarily Turkey) and Russia.
And Eastern Europe seems to be another Europe altogether. Populist leaders in the region strongly criticize what they consider to be the neoliberal tendencies of the European Union, oppose the cult of political correctness and tolerance, and contest the protection of minorities when perceived as detrimental to the interests of the majority. They place great emphasis on historical memory, the traditional religious identity of their peoples, and the Christian roots of Europe. For the purposes of our analysis, it is important to note that, while in Western Europe such positions remain on the margins of political debate, in Eastern Europe they enjoy widespread support, as is regularly demonstrated by election results at various levels.
Let us therefore clarify the term "populism." It refers, in fact, to different ideologies, usually of a social-conservative orientation, whose supporters combine the defense of traditions and traditional and conservative values as values of the majority with the defense of the social and economic interests of this majority, of the majority of the country's population. This was the case, for example, at the end of the 19th century in the United States, where the term was first used to designate a specific socio-conservative synthesis that appealed to the values and expectations of the majority of the population.
The populist worldview enjoyed the support of the population of Eastern Europe as early as the 19th century. Among the populist political movements of that time were the following: Nikola Pašić's Serbian Radical People's Party; the Romanian "poporanist" (populist) movement, which later split into a moderate and a radical faction. The former joined the National Liberal Party and significantly influenced its ideology, while the latter became the basis for future Romanian left-wing parties; Glinka's Slovak People's Party and others.
The distinctive features of the national-populist vision of contemporary Eastern Europe, which manifests itself in various national ideological systems, are the opposition between the left and the "systemic" right, traditionalism, paternalism, patriotism, and the attempt to present themselves as a "third force," an alternative to the Western-oriented conservatives and market models, traditionally at odds with each other since 1989, and to the Western-oriented social democrats.
As French philosopher Alain de Benoist observes, the growth of populism is a distinctive feature of the contemporary West. Populism is a conception of politics that puts the interests of the people as an organic whole first, as opposed to cosmopolitan elites. Instead of the division between right and left, which has lost all meaning in modern society, populists contrast the elites with the people, in a consideration that is at least politically-but not metaphysically-vertical. Another theorist of contemporary populism, Belgian sociologist and philosopher Chantal Mouffe, argues that the populist moment is a reaction to the post-political and post-democratic situation and the dominance of neoliberal hegemonic structures.
In the search for an alternative to the rejected status quo, including with regard to the geopolitical orientation of Eastern European countries, many (but not all!) populists declare their attachment to the ideas of multipolarity in foreign policy as an alternative to the traditional Atlanticism that emerged in the 1990s.
Here, it is possible to identify quite clearly the political forces that support a multipolar world order. Regardless of their degree of radicalism, they can all be traced back to the populist trend described above. Nevertheless, among populist parties, there are also movements oriented towards Atlanticism (a classic example is the ruling party in Poland, Law and Justice), or Europeanists (in the sense of being confident in the EU), creating anomalies in the implementation of multipolarism as a theory of international relations and geopolitics.
Misunderstandings and potential
What is interesting to note is that multipolarism is identified by many as the "alternative," although its theoretical principles are not fully and convincingly integrated, resulting in hybrid models that are even contradictory to the foundations of multipolarism.
Right-wing populism in Eastern Europe and multipolarism share some ideological roots, but differ in their aims, scope, and geopolitical perspective. Both arose as reactions to a liberal order perceived as imposed by the West and aim to reaffirm identity, sovereignty, and traditional values against globalist universalism. However, while right-wing populism operates within national borders and aims to redefine political power internally, multipolarism projects itself on a global scale as a vision of the international order.
In terms of common ground, both phenomena share a criticism of Western liberalism, accused of eroding collective identities, emptying the sovereignty of states, and subordinating national cultures to a uniform economic and cultural model. Populist movements in Eastern Europe-from Orbán's Fidesz in Hungary to Poland's PiS and Fico's Slovakia-refer to values such as "nation," "family," "tradition," and "order," concepts that echo the Russian worldview, centered on a multipolar order in which each civilization asserts its own specificity against Atlanticist universalism. Both reject the idea that the West is the natural center of world politics and support the right of peoples to develop autonomous political models.
But the dividing lines are just as clear. Russian multipolarism, developed by Russian thinkers and adopted by the Kremlin's geopolitical doctrine, is an imperial project: it proposes a world governed by major power centers-Russia, China, the West, the Islamic world, etc.-in balanced competition but recognized as equals. It is therefore a systemic vision of world order. Right-wing populism in Eastern Europe, on the other hand, remains essentially nationalist and internal: it does not aim for global balance, but for the defense of national sovereignty within the European Union or the European continent made up of different peoples, and the Western context in general.
Moreover, relations with Russia mark a deep political divide. While Orbán's Hungary maintains pragmatic relations with Moscow, Poland and the Baltic countries are openly wary of it, seeing Russian multipolarism as a mask for old tsarist or Soviet imperialism.