The politics of Eurasianism: identity, popular culture and Russia's foreign policy

Extract

Russia emerged from the Soviet collapse as a smaller state (though still the world's biggest), bounded by unfamiliar borders and with a significant diaspora. This triggered a search for identity and place. Some hoped, briefly, that Russia might become a close partner of the West. Others predicted that ‘Weimar Russia’ would spawn a virulent ethnic nationalism fuelled by economic crisis, betrayal myths and revanchist designs. But another movement, Eurasianism, has proved more influential in defining the new Russia's sense of itself and its relationships with others.

This excellent edited volume illuminates the meanings and uses of Eurasianism from many complementary angles. It explores, in particular, the nature of Eurasianism, its relationship to other political ideas and its practical significance for domestic and foreign politics. Eurasianism's roots lie in late nineteenth-century Russian thought, but its major development took place in the 1920s—ironically for a movement stressing Russia's non-western possibilities, its most important thinkers were exiles in western Europe. Lev Gumilev wrote extensively in the 1960s and 1970s, though his most important works were banned. Only with Soviet decline were the ideas of Eurasianism openly and widely discussed within Russia for the first time.