About the Book

A comprehensive exploration of racialization and racism in Russia that spans the Imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods.

Book Synopsis

Since its first publication in 2022, Racism in Modern Russia has become a key text for understanding the role that race has played in Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet history and politics. Analyzing a wide range of printed and visual sources, this timely accessible open access volume marks the first serious attempt to understand the history of racialization over a span of 150 years. A brilliant examination of the complexities of racism, Eugene M. Avrutin's panoramic book asks powerful questions about inequality and privilege, denigration and belonging, power and policy, the creation of exclusionary boundaries in everyday life, and the complex historical links between race, whiteness, and geography.

The revised edition includes significant new research on race and racism in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the history of color consciousness and biopolitics, and the aesthetics of anti-racism campaigns, as well as a thoroughly updated selected bibliography for further reading.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of Illinois, USA.

Review Quotes

"In Racism in Modern Russia Avrutin affirms the utility of studying racial formations in Russia, the Soviet Union, and Postsoviet space. The work offers an important intervention, demonstrating how to move beyond questioning the applicability of race to showing how and why race emerged as a feature of these societies and to what ends." --Sunnie Rucker-Chang, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University, USA

"Racism in Modern Russia offers a superb overview of the history of racial thinking in Russia and the Soviet Union and the rise of far-right nationalism and racism in post-Soviet Russia. In this excellent book, Avrutin makes an important contribution to understanding the current political and intellectual climate in Russia." --Adrienne Edgar, Professor of History, University of California, USA

About the Author

Eugene M. Avrutin is the Tobor Family Endowed Professor of Modern European Jewish History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is the author and co-editor of several award-winning books, including Jews and the Imperial State: Identification Politics in Tsarist Russia (2010) and The Velizh Affair: Blood Libel in a Russian Town (2018). Most recently, he edited, with Elissa Bemporad, Pogroms: A Documentary History (2021).