Politics of Eurasianism

In the course of Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term, many of the doctrines and ideas associated with Eurasianism have moved to the center of public political discourses in Russia. Eurasianism, both Russian and non-Russian, is politically active —influential and contested— in debates about identity, popular culture or foreign policy narratives.
Deploying a variety of theoretical frameworks and perspectives, the essays in this volume work together to shed light on both Eurasianism’s plasticity and contemporary weight, and examine how its tropes and discourses are appropriated, interpreted, modulated and deployed politically, by national groups, oppositional forces (left or right), prominent intellectuals, artists, and last but not least, government elites. In doing so, this collection addresses essential themes and questions currently shaping the Post-Soviet world and beyond.

Mark Bassin is Baltic Sea Professor of the History of Ideas, in the Center for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University in Stockholm. Gonzalo Pozo teaches International Relations and Global Political Economy at the Department of Economic History, Stockholm University.

Introduction, Mark Bassin & Gonzalo Pozo / Part I: Eurasianism, Nationalism and Ideology / 1. Defining the 'True' Nationalism: Russian Ethnic Nationalists vs. Eurasianists, Igor Torbakov / 2. 'What is more important: Blood or Soil?' Rasologiia contra Eurasianism, Mark Bassin / 3. Geopolitical Imagination and Popular Geopolitics, between the Eurasian Union and Russkii Mir, Irina Kotkina / Part II: The Cultural Politics of Eurasianism / 4. The Eurasian Symphony: Geopolitics and Utopia in Post-Soviet Alternative History, Mikhail Suslov / 5. Genghis Khan, the Golden Horde and Neo-Eurasianism in Russian Feature Films, Christine Engel / 6. Empires of the Mind: Eurasianism and Alternative History in Post-Soviet Russia, Konstantin Sheiko and Stephen Brown / Part III: "Project Eurasia" and Russia's Foreign Policy / 7. When Eurasia looks East: Is Eurasianism Sinophile or Sinophobe?, Marlene Laruelle / 8. Eurasianism in Russian Foreign Policy? The Case of the Eurasian Economic Union, Gonzalo Pozo / 9. Aleksander Dugin