S2 E10 Russia Against Modernity with Alexander Etkind

Welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America Podcast

The Anthropocene will be a doozy from what I'm hearing. Even if new technologies and new systems replace the ones currently falling apart, it will be a bumpy ride. It looks as if severe climate-related events will be occurring much more frequently. Monthly events could turn into weekly events, until eventually, those might even become daily events somewhere in the world.

Megatrends appear to be rather obvious at first glance. Autocracies are on the rise. Democracies are being tested. There is a genuine contest of political systems being played out on the global stage, Freedom is being contested. Is it even necessary? So how much better than being at the mercy of a tyrant or a mere autocrat? Maybe not, at least that's how it all appears to be going.

Russia remains a shining example of what can go wrong in a constitutional democracy. After all, reforms were once a thing in Russia, political lines were actually shifting for a brief moment in time. But then Putin rose to power, with imperialist ambitions, and a desire for supreme power and wealth. Corruption is not foreign to the former USSR. It runs rampant, and the concentration of wealth in Russia today is as bad if not worse as in the US.

Inequality remains a serious problem in the world, regardless of the political system. For the vast majority of human beings, daily life is a struggle, while a small if not tiny fraction of society remains engorged on the fat of excess of wealth and power, mobility, and security.

Alexander joined the Department of International Relations at Central European University in 2022. He previously taught at the European University Institute at Florence (2013-2022), the University of Cambridge (2004-2013), and the European University at St Petersburg (1999-2004). His current interests are the political aspects of the Anthropocene, global decarbonization, and security in Eastern Europe. A Fellow of King’s College Cambridge, Etkind was the Leader of Memory at War: Cultural Dynamics in Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, a European research project (2010-13). He is the author of Eros of the Impossible. The History of Psychoanalysis in Russia (Westview Press 1996); Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience (Polity Press 2011); Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (Stanford University Press 2013); Roads not Taken. An Intellectual Biography of William C. Bullitt. (Pittsburgh University Press 2017); and Nature’s Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources (Polity Press 2021). Alexander coedited Remembering Katyn (Polity 2012), Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe (Palgrave 2013), and Cultural Forms of Protest in Russia (Routledge 2017). His new book, Russia Against Modernity, was released by Polity in April 2023.