Abstract
It is well known that there is queue of countries anxious to join the European Union — already the twelve symbolic stars of the flag represent fifteen real members, and there are more to come. Although my perspective may be a long-term one, I believe there is value to be gained in considering the issue of enlargement of the European Union in terms of the potential entry of the Russian Federation — if only because such an exercise may help to understand the issue of what I see as basic cultural difference. This study will focus on European identity and democratic status as the relevant conditions for membership of the EU. The chapter does not address the issue of human rights or economic strength. While they are both reasonable conditions, I want to suggest that they run the risk of demanding an over-strict adherence to the significance of Western Europe.
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Notes
Samuel P. Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilimtions?’, Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993, pp.22–49.
‘A certain plot-space is divided by a single boundary into an internal and an external sphere, and a single character has the opportunity to cross the boundary’: Yuri Lotman, ‘The Origin of Plot in the Light of Typology’, in Julian Draffy (trans.), Poetics Today, 1979, Nos 1–2.
Judith Armstrong, The Unsaid Anna Karenina (London: Macmillan, 1988), p.118.
Larissa Kuznetsova, ‘What Every Woman Wants’, Soviet Weekly, 26, No.1, 1988, p.5,
quoted in Mary Buckley (ed.), Perestroika and Soviet Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p.6.
Helen Goscilo, ‘Domostroika or Perestroika?’, in Thomas Lahusen and Gene Kupman (eds), Late Soviet Culture: From Perestroika to Novostroika (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), pp.233–4.
Tatyana Tolstoya, writing in the New York Review of Books, 31 May 1990, p.3.
Quoted by Jonathan Steele, Eternal Russia: Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the Mirage of Democracy (London: Faber & Faber, 1994), p.370.
Yuri Afanas’ev, quoted in Stephen Handelman, ‘A Pre-Modem Society’, Moscow Times, 5 December 1993.
Boris Yeltsin, The View from the Kremlin (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), p.259.
Mikhail Gorbachev, The August Coup: the Truth and the Lessons (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), p.100.
Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox, revised edn (London: Phoenix, 1992).
David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb (London: Viking, 1993), p.48.
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© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Armstrong, J. (1999). Cultural Difference. In: Sakwa, R. (eds) The Experience of Democratization in Eastern Europe. International Council for Central and East European Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14511-9_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14511-9_13
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