Mark Bassin
Biographic Data
| ID | 107979 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark Bassin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark |
| FAMILY NAME | Bassin |
| SIGNATURE | BASSIN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5692-4171 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 320 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Everything Is Revealed in Maps: The European Far Right and the Legacy of Classical Geopolitics during the Cold War
This essay examines the engagement of the European Far Right during the Cold War with the legacy of classical geopolitics, above all the work of Mackinder, Spykman, Haushofer and Schmitt. The concerns of geopolitics with immanent spatial "realities" gave it an instrumental utility for the EFR as the latter sought to move beyond the obsessive preoccupation of interwar fascism (in its dominant German version) with factors of genetics and race. Beyo…
Introduction: Lebensraum and its discontents
The Geopolitical Legacy of the Russian Revolution
The essays collected in this forum discuss the geopolitical legacy of the Russian Revolution of 1917, one of the most momentous political events of the twentieth century. From a range of different academic disciplines and perspectives, the authors consider how the profound transformations in society and politics were refracted through space and geography, and how enduring these refractions proved to be. The authors focus on three themes that have…
Race contra Space: The Conflict between German Geopolitik and National Socialism / Mark Bassin
Popular views of the role of geopolitics in the Third Reich suggest a fundamental significance on the part of the geopoliticians in the ideological orientation of the Nazi state. The present chapter is an examination of the relationship of geopolitical doctrine to National Socialism, and concludes that these popular views are in important ways misleading and incorrect. Despite the numerous similarities and affinities between the two doctrines, ge…
The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism, and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia
The themes he highlights while untangling Gumilev's complicated web of influence are critical to understanding the political, intellectual, and ethno-national dynamics of Russian society from the age of Stalin to the present day
Eurasia 2.0: Russian geopolitics in the age of new media
This book discusses the return of geopolitical ideas and doctrines to the post-Soviet space with a special focus on the new phenomenon of digital geopolitics, an overarching term for different political practices including dissemination of geopolitical ideas online, use of the Internet by political figures and diplomats for legitimation and outreach activity, and viral spread of geopolitical memes. Different chapters explore and consider the new …
The Etnogenez Project: Ideology and Science Fiction in Putin's Russia
This essay examines the Etnogenez series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Launched in 2009 by the media producer, “political technologist,” and Kremlin insider Konstantin Rykov, Etnogenez has enjoyed truly phenomenal success, developing into one of the most ambitious publishing projects of the post-Soviet period. At present it numbers more than fifty works, which circulate in millions of copies and additionally are broadly disseminated on t…
Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories, and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism
Lev Gumilev and the European New Right
The striking affinities that have developed between radical-conservative movements in Western Europe and Russia since the end of the Cold War have been widely noted. This essay considers these affinities through the example of the Soviet historian and geographer Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912–1992). It argues that Gumilev and the European New Right developed perspectives that were highly comparable, founded on similar principles, and articulated t…
Karl Haushofer und Japan: Die Rezeption Seiner Geopolitischen Theorien in der Deutschen und Japanischen Politik
Soviet and Post-Soviet Identities
Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, questions of identity have dominated the culture not only of Russia, but of all the countries of the former Soviet bloc. This timely collection examines the ways in which cultural activities such as fiction, TV, cinema, architecture and exhibitions have addressed these questions and also describes other cultural flashpoints, from attitudes to language to the use of passports. It discusses definitions of p…
National Metanarratives after Communism: An Introduction
(2012). National Metanarratives after Communism: An Introduction. Eurasian Geography and Economics: Vol. 53, No. 5, pp. 553-556
Energy and Identity: Imagining Russia as a Hydrocarbon Superpower
The relationship between energy systems, on the one hand, and narratives and practices of identity building at different scales, on the other, has received little attention in the mainstream human geography and social science literature. There is still a paucity of integrated theoretical insights into the manner in which energy formations are implicated in the rise of particular cultural self-determinations, even though various strands of work on…
"A "Road to Nowhere
The Emergence of Ethno-Geopolitics in Post-Soviet Russia
A prominent UK-based political and historical geographer analyzes ethnogeopolitics, a new trend in Russian political discourse that is distinguished by the primary role it assigns to ethnicity (rather than the nation-state) as a geopolitical factor-i.e., recognizing formal (often poly-ethnic) ethno-national groupings on their respective ethnic spaces as important "geopolitical subjects" in their own right with a certain autonomy in world politics…
Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has been marginalized at the edge of a Western-dominated political and economic system. In recent years, however, leading Russian figures, including former president Vladimir Putin, have begun to stress a geopolitics that puts Russia at the center of a number of axes: European-Asian, Christian-Muslim-Buddhist, Mediterranean-Indian, Slavic-Turkic, and so on. This volume examines the political presu…
A Life Geopolitical: In Celebration of David Hooson (1926-2008)
NurtureIsNature: Lev Gumilev and the Ecology of Ethnicity
In this article, Mark Bassin explores Lev Gumilev's theory of ethnicity. Developing his ideas in the context of post-Stalinist debates about the relationship of society to the natural world, Gumilev maintained that theetnoswas a wholly natural, quasi-biological entity. Although this naturalism involved an important genetic dimension, Gumilev denied that ethnicity was determined by race and emphasized instead its ecological quality as an organic p…
Civilisations and Their Discontents: Political Geography and Geopolitics in the Huntington Thesis
This article considers the place of political geography and geopolitics in Samuel Huntington's celebrated work Clash of Civilizations. It is argued that Huntington's engagement with geography is fundamentally ambivalent. On the one hand, he frames his entire analysis as a form of what he calls political geography, and he invokes geographical factors in various ways throughout the entire text. At the same time, however, he explicitly discounts the…
Mackinder and the Heartland Theory in Post-Soviet Geopolitical Discourse
This paper considers the ways in which Halford Mackinder's ideas are represented and mobilized in geopolitical discourses in post-Soviet Russia. Mackinder is broadly recognized as the most important proponent of ‘classical’ geopolitics, and his teachings about the Pivot of History and Heartland are referred to in virtually all geopolitical texts. Not all of this attention however is positive. We examine the very different ways in which Mackinder …
Orientalism and Empire: North Caucasus Mountain People and the Georgian Frontier, 1845-1917 , by Austin Jersild
Is there a politics to geopolitics
The term geopolitics is understood and used in a variety of ways. Political geographers typically invoke the term with reference to the geographical assumptions and understandings that influence world politics. Outside of the academy, geopolitics often connotes a conservative or right-wing political-territorial calculus associated with the strategic designs of Henry Kissinger, Aleksandr Dugin, and followers of the new Geopolitik in Germany. This …
Between realism and the ‘New Right’: Geopolitics in Germany in the 1990s
This essay explores the connections between geopolitics and political conservatism. The introductory argument is that geopolitics historically has been appealing and useful for two very different expressions of conservatism: one which aims to preserve the political geography of the existing international status quo and one which seeks to transcend it and establish a new international order. Through an examination of the ‘renaissance’ of a conserv…
Geopolitical traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought
Studying ourselves: History and philosophy of geography
Russia between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geographical Space
Gehört Russland zu Europa? Der Geograph hat die Antwort am ehesten zur Hand. Georg von Rauch We should remember that a geographical region is in the last resort an abstraction with a history which can sometimes tell us much about the past. Denys Hay Russia's position between Europe and Asia is once again a timely subject. On the most official level, it figures regularly in Mikhail Gorbachev's pronouncements on foreign policy: somberly invoked eit…
Race contra space: The conflict between German geopolitik and national socialism
Imperialism and the nation state in Friedrich Ratzel's political geography
Energy and Identity: Imagining Russia as a Hydrocarbon Superpower
The relationship between energy systems, on the one hand, and narratives and practices of identity building at different scales, on the other, has received little attention in the mainstream human geography and social science literature. There is still a paucity of integrated theoretical insights into the manner in which energy formations are implicated in the rise of particular cultural self-determinations, even though various strands of work on…
Introduction: Lebensraum and its discontents
Is there a politics to geopolitics
The term geopolitics is understood and used in a variety of ways. Political geographers typically invoke the term with reference to the geographical assumptions and understandings that influence world politics. Outside of the academy, geopolitics often connotes a conservative or right-wing political-territorial calculus associated with the strategic designs of Henry Kissinger, Aleksandr Dugin, and followers of the new Geopolitik in Germany. This …
Nature, Geopolitics and Marxism: Ecological Contestations in Weimar Germany
The current debate about Marxism and ecology raises the problem of nature and its relationship to human society in Marxist theory. This essay examines these questions as they were considered and contested in the Marxist literature of Germany in the 1920s. It is suggested that at this time the 'consensus' perspective characteristic of Marxism before 1914 was challenged as different tendencies pushed it in very different directions. Ecological conn…
Mackinder and the Heartland Theory in Post-Soviet Geopolitical Discourse
This paper considers the ways in which Halford Mackinder's ideas are represented and mobilized in geopolitical discourses in post-Soviet Russia. Mackinder is broadly recognized as the most important proponent of ‘classical’ geopolitics, and his teachings about the Pivot of History and Heartland are referred to in virtually all geopolitical texts. Not all of this attention however is positive. We examine the very different ways in which Mackinder …
Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865
Between realism and the ‘New Right’: Geopolitics in Germany in the 1990s
This essay explores the connections between geopolitics and political conservatism. The introductory argument is that geopolitics historically has been appealing and useful for two very different expressions of conservatism: one which aims to preserve the political geography of the existing international status quo and one which seeks to transcend it and establish a new international order. Through an examination of the ‘renaissance’ of a conserv…
"Turner, Solov'ev, and the "Frontier Hypothesis: The Nationalist Signification of Open Spaces
Geographical Determinism in Fin-de-siècle Marxism: Georgii Plekhanov and the Environmental Basis of Russian History
Recent attempts to construct a "contextual" history of geography have refocused attention on the theories and proponents of environmental determinism, in the attempt to establish connections with the reactionary political-intellectual needs of nineteenth-century European imperialism. The present essay seeks to broaden this interpretive perspective by documenting the existence of a strong commitment to environmentalist ideas on the far left as wel…
NurtureIsNature: Lev Gumilev and the Ecology of Ethnicity
In this article, Mark Bassin explores Lev Gumilev's theory of ethnicity. Developing his ideas in the context of post-Stalinist debates about the relationship of society to the natural world, Gumilev maintained that theetnoswas a wholly natural, quasi-biological entity. Although this naturalism involved an important genetic dimension, Gumilev denied that ethnicity was determined by race and emphasized instead its ecological quality as an organic p…
The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism, and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia
The themes he highlights while untangling Gumilev's complicated web of influence are critical to understanding the political, intellectual, and ethno-national dynamics of Russian society from the age of Stalin to the present day
National Metanarratives after Communism: An Introduction
(2012). National Metanarratives after Communism: An Introduction. Eurasian Geography and Economics: Vol. 53, No. 5, pp. 553-556
The Emergence of Ethno-Geopolitics in Post-Soviet Russia
A prominent UK-based political and historical geographer analyzes ethnogeopolitics, a new trend in Russian political discourse that is distinguished by the primary role it assigns to ethnicity (rather than the nation-state) as a geopolitical factor-i.e., recognizing formal (often poly-ethnic) ethno-national groupings on their respective ethnic spaces as important "geopolitical subjects" in their own right with a certain autonomy in world politics…
Lev Gumilev and the European New Right
The striking affinities that have developed between radical-conservative movements in Western Europe and Russia since the end of the Cold War have been widely noted. This essay considers these affinities through the example of the Soviet historian and geographer Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912–1992). It argues that Gumilev and the European New Right developed perspectives that were highly comparable, founded on similar principles, and articulated t…
Studying ourselves: History and philosophy of geography
Expansion and colonialism on the eastern frontier: Views of Siberia and the Far East in pre-Petrine Russia
The Russian Geographical Society, the “Amur Epoch,'”and the Great Siberian Expedition 1855–1863 1
The history of exploration has hitherto focused largely on the description of the explorations themselves and on an analysis of their scientific-geographical findings. The fact that such exploration often is intrinsically related to political and social factors characterizing the society out of which it originates is consequently obscured, if not entirely neglected. This paper attempts to demonstrate that the genesis and the very purpose of the G…
Everything Is Revealed in Maps: The European Far Right and the Legacy of Classical Geopolitics during the Cold War
This essay examines the engagement of the European Far Right during the Cold War with the legacy of classical geopolitics, above all the work of Mackinder, Spykman, Haushofer and Schmitt. The concerns of geopolitics with immanent spatial "realities" gave it an instrumental utility for the EFR as the latter sought to move beyond the obsessive preoccupation of interwar fascism (in its dominant German version) with factors of genetics and race. Beyo…
Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has been marginalized at the edge of a Western-dominated political and economic system. In recent years, however, leading Russian figures, including former president Vladimir Putin, have begun to stress a geopolitics that puts Russia at the center of a number of axes: European-Asian, Christian-Muslim-Buddhist, Mediterranean-Indian, Slavic-Turkic, and so on. This volume examines the political presu…
I object to rain that is cheerless: Landscape art and the Stalinist aesthetic imagination
This essay considers discourses around nature and landscape in the Soviet art criticism of the Stalin period. Rather than being a genre that was neglected or in some way subordinated to the themes of industrial construction and socialist transformation, the depiction of nature was a major preoccupation of Socialist Realism. Indeed, it became progressively stronger as the Stalinist period developed from the 1930s to the early 1950s. There was a co…
History and philosophy of geography
Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment
Karl Haushofer: Leben und Werk. Vol. 1 Lebensweg 1869–1946 und ausgewählte Texte zur Geopolitik. Vol. 2 Ausgewählter Schriftwechsel 1917–1946
Carl Ritter: Geltung und Deutung. Beiträge des Symposiums anlässlich der Wiederkehr des 200. Geburtstages von Carl Ritter November 1979 in Berlin (West)
The geopolitics of Leninism
The Russian Geographical Society, the “Amur Epoch,'”and the Great Siberian Expedition 1855–1863 1
The history of exploration has hitherto focused largely on the description of the explorations themselves and on an analysis of their scientific-geographical findings. The fact that such exploration often is intrinsically related to political and social factors characterizing the society out of which it originates is consequently obscured, if not entirely neglected. This paper attempts to demonstrate that the genesis and the very purpose of the G…
Balance of Intrigue: International Rivalry in Korea and Manchuria, 1884-1899
Imperialism and the nation state in Friedrich Ratzel's political geography
Race contra space: The conflict between German geopolitik and national socialism
Expansion and colonialism on the eastern frontier: Views of Siberia and the Far East in pre-Petrine Russia
Russia between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geographical Space
Gehört Russland zu Europa? Der Geograph hat die Antwort am ehesten zur Hand. Georg von Rauch We should remember that a geographical region is in the last resort an abstraction with a history which can sometimes tell us much about the past. Denys Hay Russia's position between Europe and Asia is once again a timely subject. On the most official level, it figures regularly in Mikhail Gorbachev's pronouncements on foreign policy: somberly invoked eit…
Geographical Determinism in Fin-de-siècle Marxism: Georgii Plekhanov and the Environmental Basis of Russian History
Recent attempts to construct a "contextual" history of geography have refocused attention on the theories and proponents of environmental determinism, in the attempt to establish connections with the reactionary political-intellectual needs of nineteenth-century European imperialism. The present essay seeks to broaden this interpretive perspective by documenting the existence of a strong commitment to environmentalist ideas on the far left as wel…
On “Geographical Determinism in Fin-de-Siè cle Marxism: Georgii Plekhanov and the Environmental Basis of Russian History” by Bassin
"Turner, Solov'ev, and the "Frontier Hypothesis: The Nationalist Signification of Open Spaces
Russian Refuge: Religion, Migration and Settlement on the North American Pacific Rim
Nature, Geopolitics and Marxism: Ecological Contestations in Weimar Germany
The current debate about Marxism and ecology raises the problem of nature and its relationship to human society in Marxist theory. This essay examines these questions as they were considered and contested in the Marxist literature of Germany in the 1920s. It is suggested that at this time the 'consensus' perspective characteristic of Marxism before 1914 was challenged as different tendencies pushed it in very different directions. Ecological conn…
Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment
History and philosophy of geography
Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840–1865
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Russian empire made a dramatic advance on the Pacific by annexing the vast regions of the Amur and Ussuri rivers. Although this remote realm was a virtual terra incognita for the Russian educated public, the acquisition of an 'Asian Mississippi' attracted great attention nonetheless, even stirring the dreams of Russia's most outstanding visionaries. Within a decade of its acquisition, however, the drea…
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture
Russia is a dominant force in the world, whose culture has been shaped by its unique position on the margins of both East and West. As Russia faces new cultural challenges from outside its national boundaries, this volume introduces Russian culture in all its rich diversity, including the historical conditions that helped shape it and the arts that express its highest achievements. Newly commissioned essays by leading scholars explore language, r…
History and philosophy of geography
Studying ourselves: History and philosophy of geography
Landscape and identity in Russian and Soviet art: An Introduction
I object to rain that is cheerless: Landscape art and the Stalinist aesthetic imagination
This essay considers discourses around nature and landscape in the Soviet art criticism of the Stalin period. Rather than being a genre that was neglected or in some way subordinated to the themes of industrial construction and socialist transformation, the depiction of nature was a major preoccupation of Socialist Realism. Indeed, it became progressively stronger as the Stalinist period developed from the 1930s to the early 1950s. There was a co…
Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865
Between realism and the ‘New Right’: Geopolitics in Germany in the 1990s
This essay explores the connections between geopolitics and political conservatism. The introductory argument is that geopolitics historically has been appealing and useful for two very different expressions of conservatism: one which aims to preserve the political geography of the existing international status quo and one which seeks to transcend it and establish a new international order. Through an examination of the ‘renaissance’ of a conserv…
Geopolitical traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought
Political science (35 works) · Politics (29 works) · Law (28 works) · Sociology (27 works) · Geography (19 works) · History (19 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · Geopolitics (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Epistemology (13 works)