Eurasian Integration and the Russian World

"The book illuminates some essential aspects of Putin's political project and its hegemonic success. Moreover, it allows us to get away from an analysis of modern Russia based on Putin's self-image as the strong man exercising sovereign power in a sort of permanent state of exception because it shows that the image is the effect of a hegemonic project relying on the consent of a range of actors, institutions and agencies."

"This books is a valuable contribution to the widely studied yet contentious topic of identity politics and foreign policy in Russia. It analyses the cultural–civilisational and economic facets of Russian identity, both of which arguably go beyond Russia's state borders and are necessarily discursively constructed vis-à-vis the Western 'other'. The book contends that Eurasianism as a civilisational notion and Eurasian economic institutions are manifestations of Russia's identitary enterprise. Such an explanation of Russian identity is presented as a correction to what the author calls a flawed Western-centric and instrumentalist explanation of Russia as (yet another) Westphalian state pursuing its national interests. Instead, the book examines the 'Russian reality', according to which Russia is a community with a supranational identity that presides over its own geographically overlapping civilisational and economic 'worlds'."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09668136.2021.1951007—Shuhrat Baratov, Europe-Asia Studies

"Notwithstanding the differences between the two regionalist discourses, the book highlights 'the paramount role' of the West in Russia's identity-construction process. Russia's relations with the West are embedded in both the cultural and the economic regionalist discourses. The West is constructed as Russia's Other, while identity-formation discourses are simultaneously produced in a nexus with Western vocabulary or Western models of integration. As a result, the West remains the nodal point as well as an inspirational source for Russia's identity-building practices. Going against the mainstream interpretations of Russia's conduct, Kazharski's valuable contribution thus invites us to ask whether isolation from the West is inevitably Russia's destiny. Or other destinies might be possible instead."—Katsiaryna Lozka, International Studies Review

"Kazharski has done us the service of scrutinizing Russia's furious, and in all probability futile, attempts at beating Europe at its own integrating game. A highly interesting and depressing read."
Iver B. Neumann, Montague Burton Professor in International Relations, LSE, author of Russia and the Idea of Europe (Routledge, 1996, 2017).—Iver B. Neumann, Montague Burton Professor in International Relations, LSE, author of Russia and the Idea of Europe (Routledge, 1996, 2017).