Crisis in Russian Studies? Nationalism (Imperialism), Racism and War

Abstract

The goal of this book is to launch a discussion of the crisis in Russian studies following the 2014 European crisis and Russian-Ukrainian war which has yet to be acknowledged by historians and political scientists in Russian and Eurasian studies. The book analyses the crisis through five perspectives. The first is how Western historians continue to include Ukrainians within an imperial history of "Russia" which denies Ukrainians a separate history. The second perspective is to counter the common narrative of Crimea as "always" having been "Russian" which denies that Tatars are the indigenous people of Crimea – not Russians. The third perspective focuses on academic orientalist approaches to writing about Ukraine and the Russian-Ukrainian war. The fourth perspective downplays Russian nationalism (imperialism) in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and completely ignores the revival of Tsarist and White émigré Russian nationalism that denies the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians. Meanwhile, academic orientalism exaggerates the influence of Ukrainian nationalism in post-Euromaidan Ukraine. The fifth perspective counters the claim of Putinversteher (Putin-Understander) scholars of a "civil war" taking place in Ukraine through extensive evidence of Russian military aggression and imperialism. Finally, these five factors taken together show Russian studies will be unable to escape its crisis if it cannot come to understand how the source of the Russian-Ukrainian war lies in Russian national identity and its attitudes towards Ukraine and Ukrainians and why therefore the chances for peace are slim.