Russia’s World Order: How Civilizationism Explains the Conflict With the West

Soviet ideology proclaimed communism as the final stage of human development. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia flirted with another form of historical determinism: the belief that the country would eventually join the global march toward free-market liberal democracy. By the late 1990s, Robinson writes, Russian thinkers disillusioned with the Western model had come to see the world as composed of distinct civilizations, each with its own characteristics and developmental paths. In his rich and persuasive account, Robinson traces the roots of civilizational theory to both Western and Russian philosophers of the twentieth century. He examines the diverse, and at times bizarre, interpretations advanced by contemporary Russian ideologists. After Moscow launched a war against Ukraine, broke with the West, and pivoted toward non-Western audiences, Putin firmly embraced civilizational discourse, which is now official policy and a mainstay of presidential speeches and even schoolbooks.