13. Russian Perspectives on Eurasian Pasts

For the last three centuries, the ancient pathways running across the Eurasian steppe belt have fallen along the southern fringes of the Russian Empire and its proximate successors, the Soviet Union, and now the Russian Federation, as well as a constellation of post-Soviet states. There has been a long and robust research tradition about Eurasia within the Russian academic sphere -the intellectual space anchored in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but extending far beyond. The Russian school of research on ancient Eurasia, as a result of direct and regular contact with the diverse territories of the Black Sea, the western and eastern reaches of the Eurasian steppe, and Central Asia, offers a wide-angle view on historical, social, and economic developments across the sweeping territory (map 1). It is a perspective