This book defines Eurasianism, a political idea with a long tradition, for a new century. Historically, Eurasia was depicted as a “third continent” with a geographical and historical space distinctively different from both Europe and Asia. Today, the concept is mobilized by the Russian foreign policy elite to imagine a close relationship with China and indirectly inspires the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. A Russian-Chinese partnership forms the core of a new Eurasian region, yet Turkey, India, Hungary, Central Asia and the other parts of the supercontinent are also embracing Eurasian concepts. This book is of interest to scholars of Russian and Chinese foreign policy, to economists, and to scholars of political thought.

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.

Introduction Russia in Eurasia: External Players and Regional Dynamics-- M.R.Freire & R.E.Kanet PART I: THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AND THE GREATER CASPIAN BASIAN Russia and the CIS Region: The Russian Regional Security Complex-- B.Nygren International Rivalries in Eurasia-- S.Blank Eurasia at the Heart of Russian Politics: Dynamics of (In)Dependence in a Complex Setting-- M.R.Freire PART II: EXTERNAL POWERS, RUSSIA AND EURASIA Russia and the Greater Caspian Basin: Withstanding the U.S. Challenge-- R.E.Kanet Competing for Eurasia: Russian and European Union Perspectives-- S.Fernandes & L.Simao Russia and China in Eurasia: The Wary Partnership-- J.Berryman India and Central Asia-- A.D.Gupta Eurasia between Russia, Turkey and Iran-- M.Mesbahi PART III: INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS AND NON-STATE ACTORS, RUSSIA AND EURASIA Senseless Dreams and Small Steps: The CIS and CSTO Between Integration and Cooperation-- R.Sakwa The Atlantic Alliance in Eurasia: A Different Player?-- A.Priego Intergovernmental Organisations and Non-State Actors, Russia and Eurasia: The OSCE-- P.T.Hopmann Strategic Resources, Strategic Players: The Role of National versus International Oil Companies in Post-Soviet Eurasia-- H.Kjarnet Conclusion-- M.R.Freire.

In this original and timely book, Bruno Maçães argues that the best word for the emerging global order is 'Eurasian', and shows why we need to begin thinking on a super-continental scale. While China and Russia have been quicker to recognise the increasing strategic significance of Eurasia, even Europeans are realizing that their political project is intimately linked to the rest of the supercontinent - and as Maçães shows, they will be stronger for it. Weaving together history, diplomacy and vivid reports from his six-month overland journey across Eurasia from Baku to Samarkand, Vladivostock to Beijing, Maçães provides a fascinating portrait of this shifting geopolitical landscape. As he demonstrates, we can already see the coming Eurasianism in China's bold infrastructure project reopening the historic Silk Road, in the success of cities like Hong Kong and Singapore, in Turkey's increasing global role and in the fact that, revealingly, the United States is redefining its place as between Europe and Asia. An insightful and clarifying book for our turbulent times, The Dawn of Eurasia argues that the artificial separation of the world's largest island cannot hold, and the sooner we realise it, the better.

This book discusses and analyses the dimensions of Turkey’s strategic rapprochement with the Eurasian states and institutions since the deterioration of Ankara’s relations with its traditional NATO allies. Do these developments signify a major strategic reorientation in Turkish foreign policy? Is Eurasia becoming an alternative geopolitical concept to Europe or the West? Or is this ‘pivot to Eurasia’ an instrument of the current Turkish government to obtain greater diplomatic leverage? Engaging with these key questions, the contributors explore the geographical, political, economic, military and social dynamics that influence this process, while addressing the questions that arise from the difficulties in reconciling Ankara’s strategic priorities with those of other Eurasian countries like Russia, China, Iran and India. Chapters focus on the different aspects of Turkey’s improving bilateral relations with the Eurasian states and institutions and consider the possibility of developing a convincing Eurasian alternative for Turkish foreign policy. The book will be useful for researchers in the fields of politics and IR more broadly, and particularly relevant for scholars and students researching Turkish foreign policy and the geopolitics of Eurasia.

On the Threshold of Eurasia explores the idea of the Russian and Soviet "East" as a political, aesthetic, and scientific system of ideas that emerged through a series of intertextual encounters produced by Russians and Turkic Muslims on the imperial periphery amidst the revolutionary transition from 1905 to 1929. Identifying the role of Russian and Soviet Orientalism in shaping the formation of a specifically Eurasian imaginary, Leah Feldman examines connections between avant-garde literary works; Orientalist historical, geographic and linguistic texts; and political essays written by Russian and Azeri Turkic Muslim writers and thinkers. Tracing these engagements and interactions between Russia and the Caucasus, Feldman offers an alternative vision of empire, modernity, and anti-imperialism from the vantage point not of the metropole but from the cosmopolitan centers at the edges of the Russian and later Soviet empires. In this way, On the Threshold of Eurasia illustrates the pivotal impact that the Caucasus (and the Soviet periphery more broadly) had—through the founding of an avant-garde poetics animated by Russian and Arabo-Persian precursors, Islamic metaphysics, and Marxist-Leninist theories of language —on the monumental aesthetic and political shifts of the early twentieth century.

Winner of the 2020 Pushkin House Book Prize Russia’s relationship with its neighbours and with the West has worsened dramatically in recent years. Under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, the country has annexed Crimea, begun a war in Eastern Ukraine, used chemical weapons on the streets of the UK and created an army of Internet trolls to meddle in the US presidential elections. How should we understand this apparent relapse into aggressive imperialism and militarism? In this book, Sergei Medvedev argues that this new wave of Russian nationalism is the result of mentalities that have long been embedded within the Russian psyche. Whereas in the West, the turbulent social changes of the 1960s and a rising awareness of the legacy of colonialism have modernized attitudes, Russia has been stymied by an enduring sense of superiority over its neighbours alongside a painful nostalgia for empire. It is this infantilized and irrational worldview that Putin and others have exploited, as seen most clearly in Russia’s recent foreign policy decisions, including the annexation of Crimea. This sharp and insightful book, full of irony and humour, shows how the archaic forces of imperial revanchism have been brought back to life, shaking Russian society and threatening the outside world. It will be of great interest to anyone trying to understand the forces shaping Russian politics and society today. Also available as an audiobook.

Will the increased economic connectivity across the Eurasian supercontinent transform Europe into the western peninsula of Greater Eurasia? The unipolar era entailed the US organising the two other major economic regions of the world, Europe and Asia, under US leadership. The rise of “the rest”, primarily Asia with China at the centre, has ended the unipolar era and even 500-years of Western dominance. China and Russia are leading efforts to integrate Europe and Asia into one large region. The Greater Eurasian region is constructed with three categories of economic connectivity – strategic industries built on new and disruptive technologies; physical connectivity with bimodal transportation corridors; and financial connectivity with new development banks, trading currencies and payments systems. China strives for geoeconomic leadership by replacing the US leadership position, while Russia endeavours to reposition itself from the dual periphery of Europe and Asia to the centre of a grand Eurasian geoeconomic constellation. Europe, positioned between the trans-Atlantic region and Greater Eurasia, has to adapt to the new international distribution of power to preserve its strategic autonomy.

Moscow has progressively replaced geopolitics with geoeconomics as power is recognised to derive from the state’s ability to establish a privileged position in strategic markets and transportation corridors. The objective is to bridge the vast Eurasian continent to reposition Russia from the periphery of Europe and Asia to the centre of a new constellation. Moscow’s ‘Greater Europe’ ambition of the previous decades produced a failed Western-centric foreign policy culminating in excessive dependence on the West. Instead of constructing Gorbachev’s ‘Common European Home’, the ‘leaning-to-one-side’ approach deprived Russia of the market value and leverage needed to negotiate a more favourable and inclusive Europe. Eurasian integration offers Russia the opportunity to address this ‘overreliance’ on the West by using the Russia’s position as a Eurasian state to advance its influence in Europe. Offering an account steeped in Russian economic statecraft and power politics, this book offers a rare glimpse into the dominant narratives of Russian strategic culture. It explains how the country’s outlook adjusts to the ongoing realignment towards Asia while engaging in a parallel assessment of Russia’s interactions with other significant actors. The author offers discussion both on Russian responses and adaptations to the current power transition and the ways in which the economic initiatives promoted by Moscow in its project for a ‘Greater Eurasia’ reflect the entrepreneurial foreign policy strategy of the country.

An epic account of the rise and fall of the Silk Road empires The first complete history of Central Eurasia from ancient times to the present day, Empires of the Silk Road represents a fundamental rethinking of the origins, history, and significance of this major world region. Christopher Beckwith describes the rise and fall of the great Central Eurasian empires, including those of the Scythians, Attila the Hun, the Turks and Tibetans, and Genghis Khan and the Mongols. In addition, he explains why the heartland of Central Eurasia led the world economically, scientifically, and artistically for many centuries despite invasions by Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Chinese, and others. In retelling the story of the Old World from the perspective of Central Eurasia, Beckwith provides a new understanding of the internal and external dynamics of the Central Eurasian states and shows how their people repeatedly revolutionized Eurasian civilization. Beckwith recounts the Indo-Europeans' migration out of Central Eurasia, their mixture with local peoples, and the resulting development of the Graeco-Roman, Persian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations; he details the basis for the thriving economy of premodern Central Eurasia, the economy's disintegration following the region's partition by the Chinese and Russians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the damaging of Central Eurasian culture by Modernism; and he discusses the significance for world history of the partial reemergence of Central Eurasian nations after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Empires of the Silk Road places Central Eurasia within a world historical framework and demonstrates why the region is central to understanding the history of civilization.