The Social Science Library » Empires, Borderlands, and Diasporas: Eurasia as Anti-Paradigm for the Post-Soviet Era

Empires, Borderlands, and Diasporas: Eurasia as Anti-Paradigm for the Post-Soviet Era

Author(s)	Hagen, Mark von
Abstract	Surveys several recent key trends in the historiography of the former Soviet-dominated region and situates this work within broader developments in the historical discipline. Many scholarly journals and research organizations have adopted the term “Eurasia,” an uncertain designation laden with some past and present political controversy. This is not a new paradigm but, if anything, an anti-paradigm in several senses. First, Eurasia is meant to engage polemically with two major paradigms in the field, the essentializing and static Russia/Orient of the high Cold War and the more dynamic but shorter-termed perspective of Soviet Union/modernization. Second, today’s historians who adopt the Eurasia designation contest the antimodernist, illiberal, and often imperialist geopolitical programs that characterized both classic interwar ÃƒÂ©migrÃƒÂ© Eurasianist thought and its contemporary legatees in the region. Much of the new historical writing shares commonalities with sociocultural anthropology and postcolonial or transnational cultural studies, but it is also positioning itself in the debates in world and global history. This new body of scholarship addresses critical issues of direct concern to specialists and nonspecialists alike.
IssueNo	2
Pages	445-468
Article	Access to Article
Source	American Historical Review
VolumeNo	109
PubDate	April2004
ISBN_ISSN	0002-8762
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Empires, Borderlands, and Diasporas: Eurasia as Anti-Paradigm for the Post-Soviet Era