Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has been marginalized
at the edge of a Western-dominated political and economic system. In
recent years, however, leading Russian figures, including former
president Vladimir Putin, have begun to stress a geopolitics that puts
Russia at the center of a number of axes: European-Asian,
Christian-Muslim-Buddhist, Mediterranean-Indian, Slavic-Turkic, and so
on.
This volume examines the political presuppositions and expanding
intellectual impact of Eurasianism, a movement promoting an ideology of
Russian-Asian greatness, which has begun to take hold throughout Russia,
Kazakhstan, and Turkey. Eurasianism purports to tell Russians what is
unalterably important about them and why it can only be expressed in an
empire. Using a wide range of sources, Marlène Laruelle discusses the
impact of the ideology of Eurasianism on geopolitics, interior policy,
foreign policy, and culturalist philosophy.