Read it for yourself, and don’t dismiss it, as most western commentators have. The Pan-European Security Treaty, proposed by Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, is worth a read. Doubtless it can be modified, improved and ambiguities removed. But it makes a lot of sense, and it would be another step forward to what the last Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, urged — the creation of a “European house”, that contains Russia as one of its inhabitants. Only those “with one foot in the Cold War”, to quote President Barack Obama on the eve of his recent visit to Moscow, should find it objectionable.

Indeed, play down Bolshevism and the Cold War — a period of only 70 years in Russia’s long history — it is a thousand years since Prince Vladimir, its ruler, accepted Orthodox Christianity for himself and for his people. The moment Communism, the Cold War and its entire works were over it quickly revived.

It is 500 years since Byzantium Orthodoxy handed over the torch of the Church’s leadership to Russia. When Constantine in 326 AD moved the throne of the Roman emperor to Constantinople and took his newly adopted Church with him the city became the headquarters of the Christian faith and its patriarch. When it was overrun by the Ottomans in 1453 the only place for both the spirit and the headquarters of the Church to move to was Orthodox Russia and the Slavic lands. The “legitimate Church” was now the heritage of Russia. 1453 was also the end of the Roman Empire.

In 1767, the Empress Catherine categorically stated that “Russia is a European state.” In his ambitious study of Europe, Norman Davies wrote that “Fears of the ‘Bear’ did not prevent the growth of a general consensus regarding Russia’s membership of Europe. This was greatly strengthened in the nineteenth century by Russia’s role in the defeat of Napoleon, and by the magnificent flowering of Russian culture in the age of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and Chekov.” Indeed it is clear that when it comes to the proficiency in all the arts Russia has no peer in Europe.

When the communist dictatorship ended, it enabled Russians and many of the other peoples of the ex-Soviet Union to greet, in Vaclav Havel’s phrase, the “Return to Europe”.

When two years ago I interviewed Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Russian scholar, former National Security Adviser and now an unofficial adviser to Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, he told me that “I have given speeches about a Europe that extends from Portugal on the Atlantic to Vladivostok on the Pacific”. But he also added the important caveat, “But when that will happen I don’t know. However, I do know if Ukraine doesn’t move to the West, is prevented from moving, or is excluded from the West, Russia’s involvement with the West will be much more delayed.”

At the moment the question of Russia as part of Europe is off the agenda. The issues discussed at the recent Moscow summit are the short term ones — nuclear disarmament, Afghanistan, Iran and Georgia, although we do not know what Obama discussed with Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in private.

But one not too far off day it must be. Brzezinski is prepared to say that in 20 years’ time Russia might be considered for EU membership. There is much to put right before then, not just on the Western side but on Russia’s too.

Nevertheless, Russia wants a peaceful and productive relationship with Europe and the US. That is why we must read and work on Medvedev’s Pan-European Security Treaty. It is a good place to start if one concludes, as I do, that one day Russia must be part of the European Union.

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