Recognition of

This article seeks to recognize the "others" position in Russian civilizational thoughts. For centuries, Russia has participated in intense interactions among European, Asian and Middle Eastern regions, and it has developed a language and theories for relating to its various Others. Studying Russian debates can help us in the task of reflecting on problematic epistemological assumptions behind the western dominant theories in political science studies, as well as clarify their inefficiency in explaining the Self/Other dialectic. To understand both continuity and change in Russian civilizational debates, I draw some cases of Intellectual currents from imperial and post-soviet historical periods for analyzing their approaches toward Russian Other. The Russian Intellectual currents that have been studied in this framework include the following: Eurocentrism (both westernizers and Slavophilies), Easterners, EurasianIists and Euro-Easterners. Although moving beyond viewing East / West interaction as a challenge to Russian thinkers, some of them have found ways to conceptualize the two cultural entities as in dialogue with one another and to Redefine Russian identity. The research findings show that Russian civilizational thoughts is transforming to less-essentialism and to recognition of the Others.