In this episode of Sean's Russia Blog, host and Eurasia expert Sean Guillory speaks with Eliot Borenstein, professor of Russian and Slavic studies at New York University, about conspiratorial thinking at the Russian state level. Conspiratorial thinking at the Russian state level is well known, especially in the last few years. But expressions of paranoia are littered throughout contemporary Russian culture–popular fiction, movies, television shows, internet discussions, blogs, and religious tracts. Borenstein addresses how we should make sense of these narratives of paranoid fantasies and what they say about Russian identity and worldview when it is embodied in popular culture.

Photo by Kremlin.ru shared under a CC BY 4.0 license.