WHOSE EURASIA? CONTENDING VISIONS OF RUSSIA’S DESTINY IN SPACE

The RSCPR Research Group presents a guest lecture by Mark Bassin, Research Professor in the History of Ideas (Center for Baltic and East European Studies, Södertörn University, Sweden)

The ideology of Russian Eurasianism has had a turbulent history across the past century.  It was originally formulated by conservative-nationalist Russian emigres in the 1920s and 1930s.  This movement of “classical Eurasianism” had largely collapsed by the outbreak of World War Two, but some of its more important doctrines enjoyed a continued, albeit marginal existence in the USSR.  Then, with the breakdown of the Soviet order in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Eurasianism was “rediscovered” on a mass scale. Since then its appeal and influence has steadily expanded, to the extent that today it can count Vladimir Putin himself as one of its adherents.  This paper considers the evolution of Eurasianism across this entire period.  It argues that, despite a certain essential continuity of Eurasianist ideas, each iteration of the ideology was strongly shaped by its immediate political and historical circumstances, to the extent that they actually differ from each other in significant ways.  Examining these differences provides insights into the historical evolution of thinking about Russian identity as well as the ideological dynamics of the Eurasianism that is influential in Russia today.

Når: 16.10.15 kl 10.00–12.00
Hvor: SVHUM E-0103
Sted: Tromsø
Målgruppe: alle
E-post: andrei.rogatchevski@uit.no
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