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 multiple factors explored throughout the book’s chapters, when taken together, show that 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. Taras Kuzio is a Professor in the Department of Political Science, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and a Non-Resident Fellow in the Foreign Policy Institute, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC. His previous positions were at the University of Alberta, George Washington University, and University of Toronto.
Crisis in Russian Studies? Nationalism (Imperialism), Racism and War
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.
Table of contents
Western Histories of ‘Russia’ and Ukraine
Racism, Crimea and Crimean Tatars
Russian Nationalism (Imperialism) and Ukrainian Nationalism
