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"Clan affiliation is the determining factor. State and law cannot exist for the very simple reason that the clan is the largest entity which can be perceived by the individual citizen. Anything that tries to assume an authority above the clan immediately becomes reduced to nothing more than "a hostile clan". The idea of a state or government is absurd in a clan society.
Russia belongs to the oriental world. This fact needs to sink in before we can grasp Russian politics."

It's an obvious bulls**t for anyone who knows a bit about Russia. Russia is an European country all right. It was created by Scandinavian invaders, who conquered Slavic tribes in [as far as I remember] X century. The tribal/ clan system ended then. It's another matter that Russia can't pass over the feudal stage of state development [communist bureaucracy was very much like feudal structure]. In this kind of system everything belongs to the king / communist party or whatever and your position in the society depends on how useful you are in the judgment of ruling structure. The structure can give you at its discretion or take away. Contrary to clan structure blood ties are not so important, although they might help, your alliances with a particular group are not determined by your birth. You can change them many times through your life. Russians might be fatalistic, but they don't consider themselves as part of any bigger entity. They are highly individualistic.
If someone claims that there are clans in the European [ruling] part of Russia, he describes a country existing only in his imagination. Clans are present in Asian part of Russia, but are fully controlled by central bureaucracy and their influence stops at the threshold of the homes.

I agree with your statement that Russia is basically a European country. After saying that, I would also say that Russia is less European than countries farther to the West like Poland and other Slavic countries. One historical factor that retarded Russia's Europeanism was its domination by the Mongols for centuries. Peter the Great did much to drag Russia to the West, but Bolshevism further retarded its natural growth. Collectivism is antithetical to individualism, and many Russians still would rather have a strong figure running their country than the pluralistic system (individualistic) that we have in the West.