Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire
New Book Published by Woodrow Wilson Center Press Examines the Intellectual Force Behind Russia's Continued Search for Imperial Greatness
WASHINGTON—Woodrow Wilson Center Press has published a new book, Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire, by Marlène Laruelle. It is copublished with the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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.
"The importance of this work lies in the remarkable, even extraordinary, research effort that underpins its writing. The work's best features are the breadth of its coverage and the trenchancy of its analysis."—John B. Dunlop, Hoover Institution
"This book is an impressive achievement—wide-ranging yet sensitive to context and careful to bring together the many varieties of Eurasianism that have emerged over the 20th century. Laruelle makes us see why and how the idea of empire continues to appeal in post-Soviet space."—Willard Sunderland, University of Cincinnati
Marlène Laruelle is currently a research fellow at the Central Asia and Caucasus Institute of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. She has been a postdoctoral fellow at the French Institute for Central Asia Studies in Tashkent and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In Paris, she is an associate scholar at the French Center for Russian, Caucasian, and East-European Studies at the School of Advanced Social Science Studies.
Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire is distributed by the Johns Hopkins University Press, www.press.jhu.edu or telephone 1-800-537-5487. The list price is $60.00 for hardcover.
