Russia as Europe’s Other

We’re all familiar with the story – in 1989 the USSR collapsed and the path was made for Russia to return to Europe through the acceptance of capitalism and democracy… except that nowadays it would seem that it didn’t quite turn out that way. Many academics have come to the fore to try and explain why it is that Russia behaves the way that it does. But do these analyses unwittingly obscure the object of their study by not allowing it to speak for itself? Do the questions that researchers ask about Russia and the methods used to answer them unintentionally develop an image of a static, unchanging Russia permanently at the boundaries of Europe? This podcast attempts to assess the ways in which Russia has been made out to be Europe’s Other, and searches for new ways to conceptualize researching Russia.