For the past few months, there has been headline after headline talking about the "west"'s collective action to support Ukraine and counter Russian aggression. One thing that stood out to me is, despite the country essentially being European (technically Eurasian, but the majority of the population is European and lives in the European part), it is not treated as part of the "west."
My understanding is that the terms "west" and "east" were European terms to divide the Eurasian continent between themselves and everyone else, essentially (which is why terms like "near east", "middle east" and "far east" exist, as those regions have nothing in common with each other), adopted from the older terms of "Occident" and "Orient." Today, European offshoot colonial states are also considered western like the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel.
I know that the Cold War and the Iron Curtain shifted geopolitical realities a lot, with all countries east of Germany being referred to as "Eastern European" as they were part of the communist bloc. "Western", at least politically, has come to mean classical liberal and libertarian ideals, far from the socialism that was practiced in the other half of the continent, which I suppose made it more "eastern", along with other communist countries like North Korea, China and Vietnam. Though I am not sure if this meant they stopped being considered "western" altogether, or ever were.
My question is, has Russia ever been considered part of the "west", and if has, when exactly did it stop being considered so? Does this extend to the rest of the soviet bloc, or just Russia? Where exactly is the line between East and West, has it shifted over time and why was it drawn in the first place?
This is a broad question with a lot of potential for debate, but my view is that the contemporary usage of 'the West' or 'Western' has much more to do with the obvious exigencies of Cold War politics than anything further back in time than the Russian Revolution, and in any case the term is not especially useful to us as historians. Certainly, there’s a lot to be said about Russia’s long preoccupation with western Europe, its desire to integrate with the socially desirable European elite, and links between Russia’s nineteenth century expansionism and the imperialism of western European states, but the simplest and most practical answer to the question ‘why isn’t Russia part of the West?’ is ‘because of the mutual hostility between the Soviet Union and the nations conventionally considered to be ‘Western’ after 1917, and especially after 1945.’ That hostility is the origin of the contemporary use of the term, despite the longer history of ‘Westernness’ in prior centuries.
It is not really possible to draw ‘lines’ between the blocs without viewing the Cold War in a needlessly Eurocentric fashion - of course there was a mostly-consistent north-south line across Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War which we know as the Iron Curtain, but that is the exception rather than the rule. Globally speaking, ‘the West’ is not a geographically consistent association, but rather a political concept which was once associated with a centre of gravity in Western Europe, and after 1945 a centre of gravity in the Western Hemisphere, i.e., the United States. The location of the other components of ‘the West’ is not particularly relevant. One might look at Turkey, a Cold War ally of the U.S. and NATO member which occupies the same Eurasian borderland as Russia (and is still considered to be a potential friend of the West, though with asterisks.) Likewise, Japan is not geographically Western, but it is a key U.S. ally which is supporting Ukraine in the current war and has its own reasons, dating back to 1945, to position itself against Russia. Even the archetypal ‘Far Eastern’ nation, China, spent most of the Cold War at odds with the Soviet Union and more closely aligned with the United States – and it isn’t necessarily rushing to Putin’s aid in the present day either. There is no ‘line’ between East and West, because the geography has never lined up that way, and many countries’ allegiances changed during the Cold War for any number of reasons, or were flexible enough that it would be impossible to neatly categorise them in that way. Some never aligned with either.
The contemporary usage of ‘the West’ is somewhat analogous to the term ‘First World’ which was widely used during the Cold War but which is now considered a bit outdated. It’s useful shorthand, especially in a journalistic rather than an academic context, but it’s not a framework with which we can assess world politics.
Instead, we should think about the relationships between various states on a more individual basis, which is more complicated, but a much better reflection of foreign affairs in practice. A lot of scholarly effort in recent years has been put into 'internationalising' the Cold War by emphasising the individuality and independence of nations who were once subsumed into 'blocs', and often still are in non-academic circles. You might consider reading some Plokhy for more about the efforts of the Ukrainian and Belarusian SSRs during the Soviet collapse, or Luthi who rejects the centrality of the Soviet-American rivalry entirely.
There are two definitions of "Western" here:
The political-economic definition, by which the Iron Curtain divides Eastern Europe from the Western world. But this has no keeping in touch with geography let alone history and culture, considering Prague is further westward than Vienna.
You also have the (more useful) cultural-historical definition, by which the Byzantine-Orthodoxy civilization is split from the Western Catholic-Protestant civilization.
The Balkans (plus maybe Turkey) and the former Soviet Union both exist in the cultural space of Eurasia - one which combines elements of both European and Oriental ideas in a unique fusion. They are neither Europe nor Asia, but the transition zone that acts as a bridge between them.
