Baasanjav Terbish is offering us an impressive and original analysis on how parascience, ideology, and nationalism articulate in Russia’s regions. This book invites us to take seriously what is too often dismissed as marginal, and study how much everyday political legitimacy in Russia is rooted in meaning-producing eclectic ideologies that combine New Age religion, local folklore, and nationhood narratives.

Marlene Laruelle, George Washington University

Between the Cosmos and the Earth synthesizes Russia's ideological projects and intellectual experiments across history, geography, and regime. With its case study of the Russian republic of Kalmykia, a small, Buddhist-practicing region on the country's southern steppe, this book takes a novel approach to understanding how the Russian state has legitimated itself in the past and today. The end result is wide-ranging and erudite, offering a new perspective on how contemporary Russia has been shaped by its ethnic and ideational diversity.

Edward C. Holland, University of Arkansas

This fascinating book reveals important aspects of Russia hitherto almost unknown in the west. Using extensive field research, Terbish shows how one nation, the Kalmyks, reacted to their history and position in the Federation to create their own idiosyncratic ‘spiritual’ ideology in the 1990–2000s. This rich and clearly written account describes how local Buddhist thought combined with deep all-Russian ideological trends such as cosmism, pseudoscience, and Eurasianism. It reveals the presence of mystical thinking that can lurk beneath the politics and the modern face of Russia.

Caroline Humphrey, University of Cambridge

This wide-ranging and well-written book renders the unfamiliar culture of Kalmykia in Russia widely accessible. As a space science scholar, I was particularly fascinated by the section on ‘cosmism’. Tsiolkovsky—a great scientist and visionary—is celebrated worldwide as an evangelist of space exploration. But he wasn’t alone and wasn’t just focused on science in the narrow sense: he was embedded in a pervasive culture of ‘alternative science’, art and mysticism. Dr. Terbish’s research highlights other personalities, less familiar in the West, who influenced public attitudes toward space throughout the Soviet era—and indeed up to the present. ‘Cosmism’ represents just one chapter in this impressive book, which deserves a readership extending beyond academia.

Martin Rees, professor emeritus of cosmology and astrophysics, University of Cambridge, and author of Universe and Just Six Numbers