Reflecting the intense interest in geopolitika in the Russian Federation and Russia's preeminent position within global geopolitics, Eurasia 2.0: Russian Geopolitics in the Age of New Media is more than timely. This collection of essays compiled by Mikhail Suslov (University of Copenhagen) and Mark Bassin (Södertörn University) reminds the reader that geopolitics is, at its core, about ideology, not continents, seas, or mountain ranges. Strongly influenced by the burgeoning field of critical geopolitics, but dominated by approaches drawn from the field of Cultural Studies, Eurasia 2.0 delivers on its promise to explore the vast array of “representations of space and power in the post-Soviet context” (xxvi).

Neatly structured into five parts (Geopolitical Sensibilities, Geopolitical Ideologies, Visions of Russia as a Great Power, Post-Soviet Geopolitics and the Media, and Popular Geopolitics) with three chapters in each, the volume walks the reader through the brave new world that is Russian geopolitics. Saara Ratilainen's piece on the Russian lifestyle media and the construction of “global selves,” while a cogent and meaningful interrogation of travel blogs, starts the book off on a rather curious note given the deadly seriousness of geopolitical thinking in post-Soviet Eurasia. This trend continues with Birgit Beumers’ chapter on Russian “road movies,” which argues that the end of the USSR deprived Russia of its role as the center of a particular universe, repositioning the country on the periphery of global space, remarking that many of these films suggest that all roads lead “nowhere” (33). In her analysis of digital storytelling on YouTube, Galina Zvereva looks to Russia's internal peripheries to provide an understanding of how regional identities contribute to conceptualizations of civilization, territory, and space in the Russian Federation. While all three essays in the open section are insightful and original, classic geopolitics remains an interstitial concern, lurking in the shadows (perhaps suggesting that these chapters should have been placed elsewhere in the text).

The well-known scholar of Russian foreign policy, Andrei Tsygankov, leads off the second part of the volume with a critical analysis of the Izborsky Club (IC) and its influence on geopolitical thinking within the walls of the Kremlin. Headed by Aleksandr Prokhanov, one of the key thinkers in contemporary geopolitika, the IC serves as a testing ground for efforts at bridging the gap between “Orthodox and Eurasianist ideas of Russia's distinctiveness” in world affairs (69) by melding neo-Sovietism and tsarist nostalgia into a useable platform. While short on references to new media, the chapter is one of the strongest in terms of its contribution to the field of geopolitics. In keeping with the section's focus on radical ideas, Marlene Laruelle's subsequent chapter examines the paradoxical ideas of Geidar Dzhemal, the late Muslim philosopher who quixotically sought to reconcile fascism, Islamism, and Eurasianism. Informed by the geographically-essentialist notion of “passionarity,” made famous by historian Lev. N Gumilev, Dzhemal's revolutionary ideas—which were distributed primarily via the internet—provide an excellent tableau for understanding the changing nature of geopolitics in the post-Soviet realm. Sirke Mäkinen's chapter on Rossotrudnichestvo rounds out the triad by situating Russia's international organization for supporting its “compatriots” abroad into the “grammar of geopolitics” (103) through the framing of geopolitical codes and visions associated with the Russian language and international solidarity with the Russian “ideal.”

In the third section, Hanna Smith, Fabian Linde and Per-Arne Bodin sketch out the ways in which derzhavnost΄ (greatpowerness) manifest in the global media ecosystem. Smith focuses on Vladimir Putin's third term as president, Linde on the role of patriotic youth movements, and Bodin on the importance of imperial nostalgia (both in its tsarist and Soviet forms). These three chapters work well together, synthesizing a variety of flows of propaganda and ideology into an understandable schema that explains the often-contradictory relationship between political elites, mass movements, and online media from maps to blogs to news. Consequently, the text seamlessly transitions to the fourth section with its specific focus on media. Vlad Strukov leads off with a critical biography of Margarita Simonian, director of RT (formerly Russia Today), followed by Ryhor Nizhnikau's investigation of Belarusians’ contentious relationship with the Russian world and concluding with Alla Marchenko and Sergiy Kurbatov's examination of Facebook as a battlefield in the Ukrainian crisis. Taken collectively, this section substantively advances the reader's understanding of hybrid war and “enemy construction” (237), as well as the diversity of “internal discourses” (210) and the “rhetoric of geopolitical patriotism” in Eurasia's variegated media spaces. The final section shifts into the arena of popular geopolitics, thus bringing cultural production (or more accurately, presumption) into focus. Dirk Uffelmann delves into the tortured geolinguistic politics of Ukraine, while Greg Simons returns the reader's gaze to the new media's role in shaping the conflict in Ukraine. Suslov closes the volume with an essay on the increasingly problematic concept of the “Russian world” in the midst of an ongoing conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

Leaving popular geopolitics for last is entirely appropriate for such a collection, but this editorial decision only serves to remind the reader that there is very little in the way of “real” geopolitical literature in the final product. Certainly, a number of the contributors strive to frame their analysis within the canon (Tsygankov, Uffelman and Mäkinen, in particular); however, taken as a whole, Eurasia 2.0's major weakness is the shallowness of its engagement with the deep reservoir of geopolitical literature on Russia. Undoubtedly, the reader will walk away with a better understanding of how the ideas of Aleksandr Dugin, Prokhanov, and Dzhemal inform everyday understandings of place in space in the former Soviet Union, but any political geographer who finishes the book will likely be left with more questions than answers when it comes to the power dynamics of post-Soviet space. That being stated, Eurasia 2.0 will find purchase with scholars from across the field of Russian, Slavic, and Eurasian studies, and is likely to become the text of choice for courses exploring the shifting sands of Russian geopolitics in the age of new media.