Mongol Commonwealth? Exchange and Governance Across the Post-Mongol Space‪.‬

Suddenly, "Eurasia" is everywhere. Just a few short decades ago, even at the University of Washington--which back then stood out starkly for its atypical efforts to integrate the histories of Slavs and of Asia--the term "Eurasia" was hardly heard. (1) Today, we have the Eurasia Group (www.eurasiagroup.net), a money-making consultancy in New York, and the Eurasia Foundation (www.eurasia.org), a money-awarding agency in Washington, with branch offices in Moscow, Kiev, Tblisi, Almaty, and elsewhere, funded mostly by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In academia, the old Soviet Studies centers are now called "Eurasia": Columbia (Harriman Institute: Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies), Harvard (Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies), Berkeley (Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies), Stanford (Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies), Illinois Champaign-Urbana (Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center), Toronto (Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies), and on and on. (2) The "Central Committee" apparat on Old Square is now the "Presidential" apparat on Old Square. Of course, along with nameplates, substance can change, too. But maybe, as Karl Kraus quipped of psychoanalysis, Eurasia is the disease masquerading as the cure? A confession: I'm a perpetrator. In 2005, Princeton University's Russian Studies Program became Russian and Eurasian Studies, after a process in which some faculty objected that the addition of Eurasia would dilute the "Russia." Indeed, not everyone is going "Eurasia." Miami University of Ohio still has its Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies (which, however, organized a 2006 conference on "Performance in Eurasia"). More pointedly, consider the joint Kennan Institute-University of Washington 2004 symposium on the future of "Russian Studies." (3) The well-intentioned organizers at U. Washington--whose own program is now called "Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies"--informed me that "handling Russia is challenge enough." And look at the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS)--no "Eurasia" added to that long-standing name (after considerable discussion and the inability to find consensus on a new designation).