In his timely book Mikhail Suslov discusses contemporary Russian geopolitical culture and
argues that a better knowledge of geopolitical concepts and fantasies is instrumental for
understanding Russia's policies. Specifically he analyzes such concepts as Eurasianism Holy
Russia Russian civilization Russia as a continent Novorossia and others. He demonstrates
that these concepts reached unprecedented ascendance in the Russian public debates tending to
overshadow other political and domestic discussions. Suslov argues that the geopolitical
imagination structured by these concepts defines the identity of post-Soviet Russia while
this complex of geopolitical representations engages at the same time with the broader
international criticism of the Western liberal world order and aligns itself with the
conservative defense of cultural authenticity across the globe. Geopolitical ideologies and
utopias discussed in the book give the post-Soviet political mainstream the intellectual
instruments to think about Russia's exclusion-imaginary or otherwise-from the processes of a
global world which is re-shaping itself after the end of the Cold War they provide tools to
construct the self-perception of Russia as a sovereign great-power a self-sufficient
civilization and as one of the poles in a multipolar world and they help to establish the
Messianic vision of Russia as the beacon of order tradition and morality in a sea of chaos
and corruption.
