The ambivalent geopolitics of civilizationism in Putin's Russia

Lecture by Mark Bassin, Södertörn University, Stockholm, and Uppsala University.

Over the past decade or so, the Putin regime has developed a strong identity discourse about Russia as a self-contained civilization, or “state-civilization”.  This presentation focuses on the functional or instrumental dimension of Putinist civilizationism, namely how this discourse is constructed to rationalize and legitimize a geopolitical agenda of expansion and the projection of Russian influence across the former Soviet Union.  My basic arguments are that civilizationist ideology in Russia in fact consists of multiple identitarian narratives or imaginaries, and that it is precisely thorough these more specific sub-discourses that its practical functionality is articulated and channeled.  In certain respects, these narratives resonate strongly with each other, but at the same time they differ in important ways.  This is particularly true in regard to the geopolitical perspectives that they project, implicitly and explicitly.  In the seminar, these arguments will be explored through an examination of  two leading civilizational narratives of Putinism:  Russia as Eurasia on the one hand, and the Russian World on the other.

Bio

Mark Bassin (PhD UC-Berkeley 1983) is Baltic Sea Professor of the History of Ideas at Södertörn University, Stockholm, and Visiting Professor of Eurasian Studies at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University. His research focuses on the history of geopolitics and spatial discourses of identity and politics in Russia and Germany. His most recent book, The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia (Cornell UP, 2016) received the Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in Russian History from the Association for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies.