De Gruyter Handbook of Eurasian Societies

Post-Soviet Eurasia is one of the world’s most geopolitically consequential and rapidly transforming regions. Developments across it increasingly reshape political, economic and social relations far beyond its borders. Understanding these dynamics is therefore both intellectually urgent and analytically demanding, requiring an interdisciplinary approach capable of moving beyond established categories and fragmented national perspectives. This handbook provides a wide-ranging comparative account of post-socialist transformations across Eurasian societies. It brings together diverse theoretical approaches and research methods, offering on-the-ground perspectives from anthropology, political and cultural sociology, comparative criminology, human geography, urban studies, gender studies and cultural history. Written by leading scholars, the chapters examine how societies and social groups respond to, negotiate and actively shape wider transformations in political economy. The chapters address a variety of important topics: marginalisation, rights and freedoms; gender and politics; protest and activism; welfare and social protection; crime; labor, migration and mobility; identity, class and inequality; and the remaking of Eurasian cities under capitalism. Taken together, the contributions recast the region’s development from the ground up, challenging established interpretations and unsettling dominant narratives. By situating developments within individual countries in broader historical, regional and comparative contexts, this timely handbook also opens new ways of thinking about political-economic change and social restructuring elsewhere in the world.