Andrei Znamenski

Education

Ph.D., History, University of Toledo, 1997

Cand. Sc., History, St. Petersburg Herzen Pedagogical University, Russia, 1989

Fields of interest

Russia/Europe, Eurasia, Siberia, Religion, Modernity, Socialism, Nationalism, Western Esotericism

Recently published book

Socialism as a Secular Creed: A Modern Global History (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021). Znamenski argues that socialism arose out of activities of secularized apocalyptic sects, the Enlightenment tradition, and dislocations produced by the Industrial Revolution. He examines how, by the 1850s, Marx and Engels made the socialist creed “scientific” by linking it to “history laws” and inventing the proletariat—the “chosen people” that were to redeem the world from oppression. Focusing on the fractions between social democracy and communism, Znamenski explores why, historically, socialism became associated with social engineering and centralized planning. He explains the rise of the New Left in the 1960s and its role in fostering the cultural left that came to privilege race and identity over class. Exploring the global retreat of the left in the 1980s–1990s and the “great neoliberalism scare,” Znamenski also analyzes the subsequent renaissance of socialism in wake of the 2007–2008 crisis.

Representative publications

• Shambhala, le royaume rouge Magie et géopolitique au coeur de l’Asie. Paris: Camion Noir, 2015.
• Shambhala Rossa: Magia, profezia e geopolitica nel cuore dell’Asia. Rome: Settimo Sigillo, 2014.
• Shambhala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia. Quest Books, 2011.
• The Beauty of the Primitive: Indigenous Shamanism and Western Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Shamanism in Siberia: Russian Records of Indigenous Spirituality. Dordrecht (The Netherlands): Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003.
• “In Search of the Russian Idea: Igor Shafarevich’s Traditional Orthodoxy.” The European Studies Journal 13 (1996): 33-47.
• “A Left Master’s Dangerous Heresy.” Claremont Review of Books. September 8, 2017.
• “’European Miracle’”: Warrior Aristocrats, Spirit of Liberty, and Competition as a Discovery Process.” The Independent Review, vol. 16, no. 4 (2012): 599-610.
• “From ‘National Socialists’ to ‘Nazi’: History, Politics, and the English Language.” The Independent Review, vol. 19, no. 4 (2015): 537–561.
• “In the Shadow of Dr. Lueger: Vienna Notes of an Accidental Tourist.” The Independent Review, vol. 18, no. 1 (2013): 135–145.
• “’European Miracle’”: Warrior Aristocrats, Spirit of Liberty, and Competition as a Discovery Process.” The Independent Review, vol. 16, no. 4 (2012): 599-610.
• “History with an Attitude: Alaska in Modern Russian Patriotic Rhetoric.” Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas 57, no. 3 (2009): 346-373.
• “‘A Household God in the Socialist World.’ Lewis Henry Morgan and Russian/Soviet Anthropology.” Ethnologia Europaea: Journal of European Ethnology (Copenhagen), 2 (1995): 177-188.
• “In Black or White, or through Marxist Glasses: The Image of the Indian in the Soviet Press and Scholarship.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, vol. 16, no. 1 (1992): 119-136.