An Alternative Internationalism: The Main Lines and Legacies of Polish Sovietology, Promethean Orientalism and the Soviet ‘Southern Borderlands’, 1926–1939
Journal: Europe Asia Studies
Year: 2019

‘Prometheism’ was an interwar movement of borderland nationalists from the former Russian Empire who envisioned the division of the Soviet Union into independent nation-states. This article argues that ideological affinities and diasporic connections made the Promethean cause an attractive ‘alternative internationalism’ to the Soviet system for exiled thinkers hailing from the so-called ‘southern borderlands’ of Crimea, the Caucasus, the Volga region and Central Asia. In the 1930s, Prometheism d