Olaf Scholz, His Program of the Future, and the European Direction in Russia's Foreign Policy

Abstract

The article features the current European direction in Russia’s foreign policy in the context of the Western ideas and its response to them. The author focuses on the current ideological state of the modern European direction as part of Russia’s foreign policy and the role of the historical community in its development. The research objective was to identify and classify the dominant European ideas, as well as to define their influence on the European direction of Russia’s foreign policy and to outline the prospective cross-thematic historical research. The combined historical-subject and historiographical goal resulted from the incomplete nature of the processes under study and the opportunities for the Russian historical community to participate in the formation of the modern European direction of Russia’s foreign policy. The author believes that the cooperation of historians and social scientists can bring about major practical benefits. The research relied on standard historical methods and the method of discursive analysis. The chronological scope of the article is limited to 2022 and the early 2023, which made it impossible to provide a brief overview of the related literature in the introduction. The article is debatable and refers to a mixed type of subject-theoretic articles on recent history. The main practical results are the four possible directions of cross-thematic research: 1) the history of splits in Europe, European states, and European societies, as well as their consequences; 2) worldviews, conflicting worldviews, struggle and dialogue of worldviews, uni-/multivariant and un/productive synthesis of ideas and their consequences; 3) the first stage of globalization in modern history and prospects for European integration; 4) options, types, and patterns of partnerships and collaborations within Europe and individual European countries, as well as societies outside Europe.