Russia Between East and West: Scholarly Debates on Eurasianism

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Dmitry Shlapentokh
BRILL, 2007 - Social Science - 198 pages
Throughout most of Russian history, two views of who the Russians are have dominated the minds of Russian intellectuals. Westerners assumed that Russia was part of the West, whilst Slavophiles saw Russia as part of a Slavic civilization. At present, it is Eurasianism that has emerged as the paradigm that has made attempts to place Russia in a broad civilizational context and it has recently become the only viable doctrine that is able to provide the very ideological justification for Russia's existence as a multiethnic state. Eurasians assert that Russia is a civilization in its own right, a unique blend of Slavic and non-Slavic, mostly Turkic, people. While it is one of the important ideological trends in present-day Russia, Eurasianism, with its origins among Russian emigrants in the 1920s, has a long history. Placing Eurasianism in a broad context, this book covers the origins of Eurasianism, dwells on Eurasianism's major philosophical paradigms, and places Eurasianism in the context of the development of Polish and Turkish thought. The final part deals with the modern modification of Eurasianism. The book is of great relevance to those who are interested in Russian/European and Asian history area studies.
 

Contents

Eurasianism and SovietPostSoviet Studies Dmitry Shlapentokh
1
The Orient in Russian Thought at the Turn of the Century Marlène Laruelle
9
Eurasianism as a Reaction to PanTurkism Stephan Wiederkehr
39
Karsavin and the Eurasian Movement Françoise Lesourd
61
Absolutism and Authority in Eurasian Ideology Karsavin and Alekseev Ryszard Paradowski
95
From Rejection to Attempts at Reconciliation Poles and the Interwar Eurasian Movement Roman Bäcker
109
AntiSemitism in Eurasian Historiography The Case of Lev Gumilev Vadim Rossman
121
Conclusion Dmitry Shlapentokh
193
Index
195
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About the author (2007)

Dmitry Shlapentokh was educated in the former USSR (Moscow State University) and in the USA (Ph.D., University of Chicago). He is currently Associate Professor at Indiana University and holds teaching/research appointments in various institutions, including the Russian Research Center (Harvard University), and the Hoover Institution (Stanford University). He is the author of several books and almost a hundred articles and book chapters.

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