Geopolitical Identities in Post-Soviet Russia

Studying the panoply of geopolitical concepts in post-Soviet Russian political debates The Russian World and Other Imaginary Places argues that the ’return of geopolitics’ and decline in communist ideology has meant geopolitics play a much stronger role in both political ideology and identity making in modern Russia. Focusing mainly on the Post-Soviet period the author also engages with pre-revolutionary ideas to situate current visions within the post-imperial Soviet Union and link them with the geopolitical metaphors shaping Russian identity and domestic and foreign policy making today. Policy documents, interviews and rigorous analysis of social networks and the ’blogosphere’ provide valuable research sources and rare, first hand data on practical, formal and popular geopolitical visions. The reading of discourses on geopolitics and their historical origin gives a unique overview of recent developments such as the Putinite cultural turn and the place of Crimea and Novorossiya while tracing the intellectual roots of geopolitical concepts and locating the ’Russian case’ within a broader global phenomenon