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Russia, Eurasia and the Crisis of the Liberal West (998M9)

30 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Spring teaching

On this module, you’ll learn how Russia and Eurasia are shaped by and contribute to global transformations since the end of the Cold War.

After the collapse of the USSR, the region was a laboratory for economic liberalisation and democratisation. However, its development in the intervening decades has not only illustrated the limits of the West’s global liberalisation project, but is now contributing to the crisis of the ‘rules-based’ liberal international order.

Paying attention to regional legacies of non-Western empires and Soviet modernisation, we’ll:

• critically examine IR debates about power, identity and empire
• learn about the role of Russia and Eurasia in global (geo)politics today.

Topics include:

• Soviet and imperial legacies
• identities, borders and conflict in Eurasia
• Ukraine, Russia and ‘the West’
• Central Asia and the Caucasus
• Russia, ‘conservative values’, and the rise of national populism in Europe and globally
• Russian-US relations since the Cold War and the nuclear issue
• the transformation of the geopolitics of energy
• economic sanctions and their fallout
• Russia, China and the ‘new authoritarian axis
• Russia and the global South.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 300 hours of work. This breaks down into about 33 hours of contact time and about 267 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2026/27. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.