From Empire to Eurasia: Politics, Scholarship, and Ideology in Russian Eurasianism, 1920s-1930s

by Sergey Glebov

Overview

The Eurasianist movement was launched in the 1920s by a group of young Russian émigrés who had recently emerged from years of fighting and destruction. Drawing on the cultural fermentation of Russian modernism in the arts and literature, as well as in politics and scholarship, the movement sought to reimagine the former imperial space in the wake of Europe's Great War. The Eurasianists argued that as an heir to the nomadic empires of the steppes, Russia should follow a non-European path of development. In the context of rising Nazi and Soviet powers, the Eurasianists rejected liberal democracy and sought alternatives to Communism and capitalism. Deeply connected to the Russian cultural and scholarly milieus, Eurasianism played a role in the articulation of the structuralist paradigm in interwar Europe. However, the movement was not as homogenous as its name may suggest. Its founders disagreed on a range of issues and argued bitterly about what weight should be accorded to one or another idea in their overall conception of Eurasia. In this first English language history of the Eurasianist movement based on extensive archival research, Sergey Glebov offers a historically grounded critique of the concept of Eurasia by interrogating the context in which it was first used to describe the former Russian Empire. This definitive study will appeal to students and scholars of Russian and European history and culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875807812
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	05/15/2017
Series:	NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Edition description:	1
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Sergey Glebov is associate professor of history at Smith College and Amherst College. He received his MA from Central European University and his PhD from Rutgers University. He is a founding editor of Ab Imperio.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction

Eurasia's Many Meanings 1

Chapter 1 Exiles from the Silver Age 9

1 From the Silver Age to Exile 9

2 Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoi 13

3 Petr Petrovich Suvchinskii 19

4 Petr Nikolaevich Savitskii 26

5 The Eurasianist Universe: The Others 33

Chapter 2 The Mongol-Bolshevik Revolution

The Eurasianist National Mystique 39

1 "We Are Alien to Debilitating Reflection": Eurasianist Generational Rhetoric 42

2 The National Mystique and the Search for Asian Elements: Fin-de-Siècle Influences 48

3 Revolution as Revelation: Religious Interpretation of Social Change 58

4 Mongols as Bolsheviks: The Compression of Time 63

5 Phenomenology of Revolution: "The Ruling Selection" Ideocracy, and the Future Eurasian State 66

6 Eurasianism and Fascism: A Reconsideration 71

Chapter 3 The Anticolonialist Empire

N. S. Trubetskoi's Critique of Evolutionism and Eurocentrism 76

1 Remapping the World: World War I, Russian Revolution, and Reconfigurations of the Global Map 78

2 Europe in Question: Interwar Kulturpessimismus 81

3 After the Deluge: Russia as a Colony 83

4 Russia-Eurasia and Its World-Historical Mission: Leading the Anticolonial Uprising 88

5 "Hypnosis of the Words": Critique of Eurocentrism and Evolutionism 91

6 The Debate across Time: Eurasianism as a Critique of Russian Evolutionism 100

7 The World as a Rainbow: Religious Drversitarianism and Rebellion against Universalism 102

Chapter 4 In Search of Wholeness

Totalizing Eurasia 111

1 Paradoxes of Eurasian Nationalism 112

2 In Search of Cultural Wholeness: From Slavdom to Turan 117

3 Eurasia's Ukrainian Challenge 122

4 Geographical Pivot: Eurasia as a Geographical System 126

5 Eurasia as a Chronotope: In Search of Non-Eurocentric History 135

Chapter 5 The Structures of Eurasia

Trubetskoi, Savitskii, Jakobson, and the Making of Structuralism 148

1 A Forgotten Source 148

2 Lévi-Strauss and Jakobson 150

3 "Not Entirely Ours:" Roman Jakobson and the Eurasianists 152

4 In Search of Russian Science 157

5 The Empire of Language: Space and the Study of Structures 162

6 The Political Ontology of Eurasian Structures: Goal, Convergence, Evolution, Religion 169

Epilogue

Eurasianism as a Movement 175

Notes 189

Index 231

What People are Saying About This

Mark von Hagen

This book is a long-awaited culmination of several years of articles and, most recently, a Russian-language collection of annotated documents on the history of one of the most fascinating intellectual movements to emerge from the Russian post-revolutionary emigration. The tragic conclusion to Glebov's story reads like a genuine tale of espionage.

Olga Maiorova

There could be no better time to publish a book on Eurasianism-a proto-fascist ideology elaborated by Russian émigrés of the 1920s-since today's Russia has seen a surge in the popularity of nationalist, illiberal, and even totalitarian ideas, sometimes loosely identified with Eurasianism. Glebov's book stands out as a major contribution to the field. He offers the most comprehensive and systematic analysis of Eurasianism, and he undertakes it from a new perspective, spanning a wide spectrum of Eurasianist ideas and representing their ideology as a dynamic interrelation of concurrent positions and temporary allegiances shifting over time.

Editorial Reviews

Through careful and insightful analysis of the lives and ideas of these Eurasianists, Glebov provides new perspectives on the Russian, European, and Asian influences that informed their thinking, how they argued over concepts, and how they dealt with the continuing existence of the Soviet state and, ultimately, fell apart. Highly recommended.

Choice

Through careful and insightful analysis of the lives and ideas of these Eurasianists, Glebov provides new perspectives on the Russian, European, and Asian influences that informed their thinking, how they argued over concepts, and how they dealt with the continuing existence of the Soviet state and, ultimately, fell apart. Highly recommended.

-- "Choice"

While earlier studies have covered much of the same territory, Glebov's work stands out by virtue of the depth and the sophistication of its analysis. Perhaps most notable is the author's determination to contextualize Eurasianism by mapping it firmly onto the multiple intellectual, cultural, and political milieux-Russian as well as West European-out of which it developed.

-- "The Russian Review"

From the Publisher

While earlier studies have covered much of the same territory, Glebov's work stands out by virtue of the depth and the sophistication of its analysis. Perhaps most notable is the author's determination to contextualize Eurasianism by mapping it firmly onto the multiple intellectual, cultural, and political milieux-Russian as well as West European-out of which it developed.

The Russian Review