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Peaking Behind The Curtain In Russia

Marlene Laurelle is a Research Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at George Washington University in Washington DC.

She is an expert on the culture and anthropology of Russia and many of the Stan central asian countries. She’s written 10 books on these subjects and was just the most incredible guest to have had on the show.

The podcast starts in Kyrgyzstan and then moves onto religion and what Marlene thinks is a global wave of de-secularisation… we then move up into Murmansk and the frozen tundra cities of Siberia’s north to then Marlene’s thoughts on Russian demographics and finally she lays out the current state of affairs in the Russian-Ukraine war. 

#160 Marlene Laurelle - Peaking Behind The Curtain In Russia!

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Here is a transcript of the opening exchange from the conversation…

Ryan
So you spent a bit of time in Kyrgyzstan. Tell us about that country.

Marlene
Kyrgyzstan, it's a wonderful, mountainous country, close to China, close to Tajikistan and the rest of Central Asia, close to Kazakhstan. I worked there for several years when I was a PhD student and then a young scholar. I did a lot of things in Central Asia, so I traveled all through the five countries and Kyrgyzstan is a wonderful one.

Ryan
Does Kyrgyzstan have any geopolitical significance?

Marlene
Well, it's a small country, so it's mostly act as a client, unfortunately, of Russia or China. But you could also reverse the vision and say that small countries, especially those in Central Asia that are between big, great powers, have their own geopolitical strategies. They can support or challenge both Russia and China, and they have often more agency that we want to imagine international relation in kind of valorizing the role of small countries and saying that, well, they may have more leverage than we imagine compared to great powers.

Ryan
Which is a country that geopolitically in that same vein, you just mentioned… punches above its weight?

Marlene
Oh, that's a good question. Probably a lot of post-Soviet countries would fit that definition, right? They may be small, but they are ambitious. And those who have... No, I think Mongolia is pretty reasonable, right? It has a good vision of its own possibilities and limitation, right? And it has a very carefully crafted foreign policy.

I think other countries like Azerbaijan, for example, because they are rich in oil, tend to be super ambitious on what they think they can do. I mean, sometimes it works for them, as they just did in Nagorno-Karabakh. All right, Kazakhstan has also a lot of ambitions, but it has a real kind of regional power status. But they aspire to more than that.

Ryan
How religious are they on a secular to fundamentalist spectrum?

……. continue the conversation with the podcast here.