Assuming that neo-Eurasianism, with its imperial, nationalistic, and xenophobic values profoundly shapes the political imaginary of post-Soviet Russian society and politics, Marina Klyshko poses the question: To what extent does post-Soviet Russian literature stabilize and destabilize this imperial political imaginary? Does it make use of the genuine means of literary discourse and thus function as a “counter-discourse” as defined by Achim Geisenhanslücke?

In a chapter of approximately one hundred pages, Klyshko meticulously delineates the theoretical underpinnings of the analytical inquiry. She expounds upon the foundational concept of “political imaginary” borrowed from Albrecht Koschorke and Susanne Lüdemann, and traced back to Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort. In order to comprehend the spatial focus of the Russian political imaginary and the literary engagement with it, Klyshko introduces Iurii Lotman’s semiosphere, as well as geopoetics and geoculturology (Sasse/Marszalek/Frank), but leaves them unexplored in subsequent chapters. Synthesizing significant theses from Marlene Laruelle and Sergey Glebov, Klyshko asserts the significance of (new) Eurasianism within the broader Russian political imaginary. On this basis, she proceeds with a discourse analysis, identifies the central metaphors of the Eurasianist discourse, and demonstrates that these metaphors serve a reality-constituting function. The Eurasianist discourse employs metaphors of rootedness, collective body, and multi-ethnic unity to naturalize its imperial geopolitical worldview.

Klyshko’s examination of literary engagements with the ideology of (neo)Eurasianism is based on a heterogeneous selection of texts. Her analysis commences with a discussion of Pavel Krusanov’s widely discussed novel Ukus angela (The Angel’s Bite, 1999), which pioneered a new genre of popular political fantasy and was employed as a political manifesto by St. Petersburg fundamentalists. A second analytical chapter is devoted to the novel series Evraziiskaia simfoniia (Eurasian Symphony, 2000–05), published under the pseudonym Kholʹm van Zajchik and presented as a translation from Chinese; and finally Vladimir Sorokin’s later novels from Goluboe Salo (1999) to Telluriia (2013). This selection assembles a diverse array of texts, encompassing a range of genres, including a novel interpreted as a fictional representation of the imperialist principles of Neo-Eurasianism, novels classified as popular crime fiction and counterfactual historical fiction, and novels that exemplify a literary sophistication in their pursuit of novel literary pathways in the twenty-first century. A close examination shows that all of these works are preoccupied with the central motifs of the empire’s spatial size and expansionist ambitions, its multi-ethnicity, the imagery of earthboundness and a related specific body metaphor. These motifs and imagery are employed to illustrate the empire’s quest for unity.

One example is the metaphor of the organism. In Krusanov’s novel, empire is conceptualized as a living entity, driven by a relentless pursuit of expansion. But ultimately, exactly this drive leads in the end to the empire’s self-destruction. In Sorokin’s Goluboe Salo, the typically Russian imperial obsession with space is illustrated satirically with the help of a realized metaphor: the order of “earth bucks.” In Telluriia, the corpse of the empire decomposes on its own, and new beauty can blossom from its fragmented remains. Klyshko observes that Sorokin contrasts the organic imagery of Eurasianism with the physical imagery of atomization, magnetic fields, and elementary particles. By not completely replacing the organic imagery of togetherness, but rather combining it with the imagery of quantum physics, Sorokin insinuates the option of a more or less peaceful transition from the violent and self-destructive empire to a new, egalitarian, and truly diverse society.

What Klyshko’s reading does not make clear enough is that whereas the novel series aligns with Klyshko’s postulate that “fictional literature has a stabilizing effect on the neo-Eurasian discourse by presenting its ideas and elements to a broad audience in an entertaining form” (263), Krusanov’s novel and Sorokin’s novels—despite their marked differences in political orientation—can be regarded as literary explorations of Eurasianism that utilize the potential of fictional representation to engender imaginative openness and ambivalence. Unveiling dystopian dimensions, they function as destabilizing counter-discourses.

Given that the majority of the selected texts date from the first decade after the turn of the millennium, further interesting questions could have been developed with regard to genre-related differences (also in the treatment of ideologemes), as well as theses on the historical periodization of these imperial imaginations. This would have been anticipated in a work from the early 2020s, when the geopolitical landscape looks markedly different. In sum, Marina Klyshko’s work provides a valuable contribution to the analysis of the political imaginary of Russian literature at the beginning of the new millennium. By underscoring pivotal elements of imperial Russian imaginations in comparison with the imperial geopolitical ideology of (neo-)Eurasianism, particularly with regard to the construction of “space” and the “multi-ethnic unity” of the empire, her work offers a nuanced and insightful perspective on the subject. She demonstrates that these elements are employed (and occasionally contemplated) in all three groups of texts—the novel by Pavel Krusanov, the popular novel series “Eurasian Symphony,” and the novels by Vladimir Sorokin—to fictionally stage predominantly peaceful visions of the Russian empire in an alternative past and/or an open future. However, given the considerable dissonance between these visions and contemporary reality, the establishment of a historical classification would have been of paramount importance.