SUMMARY:

Aleksei Penzin invokes the concepts of modernization and catch-up development in order to describe the post-Soviet perception of relations between Russia and the West in general and the situation of humanities and social sciences in particular. He then discusses the revisions of “modernization” theory within world-system analysis and postcolonial studies. While he traces elements of a current orientalization of Russia by the West, he focuses on the more complicated issues of self-orientalization by Russian scholars and on their compensatory postcolonial behavior, which corresponds to outside expectations or supports local tendencies toward isolationism and “sovereign” democracy and nationalism. Penzin describes the local situation in Russian academia as impenetratable for foreign observers due to the lack of conventional language for discourse and the strong role played by stereotypes and orientalizing discourses. In this regard the language of Marxism was a more adequate medium for international academic discourse. Penzin calls for the acceptance of a more multipolar view of the world that will not impose the core–periphery hegemonic vision.