ABSTRACT
Mikhail Suslov and Irina Kotkina explore the production of civilizationism in Russian academia, zooming in on Russian doctoral dissertations defended in 1998–2017. The ubiquity of civilizational rhetoric in academic research, as they argue, brings together compliant academics and intellectuals, the political elite as well as military and security officials. Among the most famous doctoral candidates encountered in their analysis are the minister of culture Vladimir Medinskii and the prominent politician Dmitrii Rogozin. Suslov and Kotkina contextualize civilizational rhetoric in contemporary Russian conservatism and its widespread use of organicist concepts. Civilizational rhetoric has become the default language of pro-Kremlin ideologists for describing Russia, and the language is rehearsed in academic theses. Foundational texts are those of Lev Gumilev and Samuel Huntington. The securitization of Russian civilization, the aim being to protect it from “foreign” influence, figures prominently in dissertations by politicians and security officials. Civilizationism serves to portray Russia as self-sufficient and as possessing its own logic of historical development. The authors conclude that civilizationism in the present Russian academic world has blurred the distinctions between research, politics, and opinion journalism.
