On March 5th, Sanna Turoma, a senior research fellow at the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki, visited EUSP. Professor Turoma gave a talk on the ‘spatial turn’ in Russian studies.
In the history of the social sciences there have been three paradigmatic shifts: linguistic, cultural, and, finally, spatial. What possibilities will this spatial turn open up in the studies of Russia and the Soviet Union?
It is now common to speak about rapid globalization and its links to communication, trade, travel, growing levels of migration and other forms of displacement, cyberspace, global networks, media, etc. Because of this, the spatial turn is tied to contemporary global trends and modernization as a whole.
The spatial turn is first and foremost a criticism of naturalizing and universalizing narratives (essentialism). Secondly, it implies the conceptualization of phenomena in terms of displacement from the center to the periphery, from capitols to borders, from structure to context, from sovereign national governments to transnational networks and flows. Two disciplines that each lay claim to a special understanding of space form the foundation of the spatial approach: geography and architecture.
Researchers currently studying Russian history, culture and society are focusing more and more on the discursive and material practices of space and modernization in Russia. Viewing Russia through a spatial lens allows us to see that Russia’s geographic span has imbued its history with ambivalence: in Russia the closely-linked but contradictory desires for empire building and the nation state exist simultaneously, and imperial and national identities coexist side by side. It’s not surprising that the renewed interest in empires has resonated strongly among researchers of Russian and Soviet history, society and culture. Until recently, however, Russia was not examined from an imperial perspective.
Russia’s geographic position between east and west greatly influenced social thought—hence the emergence of Eurasianism. Eurasianism is a unique doctrine that unites empire and space. Having first appeared in post-revolutionary years in the Russian émigré community, the doctrine returned to Russia in the late Soviet period and became very popular in the 1990s. Classical Eurasianism considers Russia to be a special civilization, a leader of colonized peoples, and a supra-ethnic system. It is the idealization of cultural colonialism. After perestroika, the relationship of geographic and political views was combined in a special discipline known as geopolitics. And political identity is precisely related to geography and space…
The unification of imperial and spatial history, two popular approaches in the social sciences, allows us to understand how space is constructed in the perspective of historical narratives and cultural production. The particular Russian preoccupation with space is included in the context of contemporary approaches in the social sciences. Russia’s spatial expanse can be seen as both an advantage and barrier to modernization and the development of infrastructure and technology. Space in Russia has predetermined mobility and expansion, but also slow communications between different parts of this space, insufficient infrastructure, and sluggish historical change. Russia’s geographic span can be considered as both an obstacle and path toward modernization as well as a perpetual resource for industrial, economic and technological progress. The destruction of a bipolar system led to transformations in Russia and the post-Soviet space: fragmentation, instability and the insecurity of territories, borders, populations and the distribution of power call for further study.
Sofya Lopatina
