Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories, and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism

by Mark Bassin (Editor), Sergey Glebov (Editor), Marlene Laruelle (Editor)

Overview

Between Europe and Asia analyzes the origins and development of Eurasianism, an intellectual movement that proclaimed the existence of Eurasia, a separate civilization coinciding with the former Russian Empire.  The essays in the volume explore the historical roots, the heyday of the movement in the 1920s, and the afterlife of the movement in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The first study to offer a multifaceted account of Eurasianism in the twentieth century and to touch on the movement's intellectual entanglements with history, politics, literature, or geography, this book also explores Eurasianism's influences beyond Russia.
            The Eurasianists blended their search for a primordial essence of Russian culture with radicalism of Europe's interwar period. In reaction to the devastation and dislocation of the wars and revolutions, they celebrated the Orthodox Church and the Asian connections of Russian culture, while rejecting Western individualism and democracy. The movement sought to articulate a non-European, non-Western modernity, and to underscore Russia's role in the colonial world. As the authors demonstrate, Eurasianism was akin to many fascist movements in interwar Europe, and became one of the sources of the rhetoric of nationalist mobilization in Vladimir Putin's Russia. This book presents the rich history of the concept of Eurasianism, and how it developed over time to achieve its present form.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822963660
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	06/04/2015
Series:	Russian and East European Studies
Edition description:	1
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Mark Bassin is research professor of the history of ideas in the Center for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University, Stockholm. He is the author of Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865 and co-edited Soviet and Post-Soviet Identities and Space, Place, and Power in Modern Russia: Essays in the New Spatial History.
Sergey Glebov is assistant professor of Russian history at Smith College and Amherst College. Glebov is the founding editor of Ab Imperio: Studies in Nationalism and New Imperial History in the Post-Soviet Space.
Marlene Laruelle is director of the Central Asia Program and a research professor of international affairs at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES), Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. She is the author of Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire, In the Name of the Nation: Nationalism and Politics in Contemporary Russia, and Russia’s Strategies in the Arctic and the Future of the Far North.

Table of Contents

Introduction: What Was Eurasianism and Who Made It? Mark Bassin Sergey Glebov Marlene Laruelle 1

1 A Revolutionary and the Empire: Alexander Herzen and Russian Discourse on Asia Olga Maiorova 13

2 The Eurasians and Liberal Scholarship of the Late Imperial Period: Continuity and Change across the 1917 Divide Vera Tolz 27

3 N. S. Trubetskoi's Europe and Mankind and Eurasian Antievolutionism: One Unknown Source Sergey Glebov 48

4 Conceiving the Territory: Eurasianism as a Geographical Ideology Marlene Laruelle 68

5 Eurasianism as a Form of Popperian Historicism? Stefan Wiederkehr 84

6 Metaphysics of the Economy: The Religious and Economic Foundations of P. N. Savitskii's Eurasianism Martin Beisswenger 97

7 Becoming Eurasian: The Intellectual Odyssey of Georgii Vladimirovich Vernadsky Igor Torbakov 113

8 Spatializing the Sign: The Futurist Eurasianism of Roman Jakobson and Velimir Khlebniko Harsha Ram 137

9 Eurasianism Goes Japanese: Toward a Global History of a Russian Intellectual Movement Hama Yukiko 150

10 Narrative Kulikovo: Lev Gumilev, Russian Nationalists, and the Troubled Emergence of Neo-Eurasianism Mark Bassin 165

Postface: The Paradoxical Legacy of Eurasianism in Contemporary Eurasia Marlene Laruelle 187

Notes 195

Contributors 257

Index 261

Editorial Reviews

Goes a long way toward meeting the need for a multidisciplinary and multiethnic understanding of this important and fascinating current in modern Russian history. [These essays] advance our understanding of Eurasianism’s origins, the contexts within which it took shape as a movement among emigre and exile circles in interwar Europe, and its legacies across time and space—from interwar Japan to late Soviet and contemporary Russia. This volume should help readers formulate their own answers to key questions on Russia’s historical identity and the future trajectory of the post-Soviet space and the peoples that inhabit that space.”
—Russian Review


“A superb collection and brilliant achievement. Each chapter builds on previous ones to provide an original and path-breaking study of the very complex movement that we call ‘Eurasianism.’ Undoubtedly a landmark publishing event in the field.”
—Richard Sakwa, University of Kent


“An innovative, well rounded volume that will certainly occupy a prominent place in the literature on the Eurasianist movement.”
—Nathaniel Knight, Seton Hall University

From the Publisher