This seminal book explores the complex relationship between popular geopolitics and nation branding among the Newly Independent States of Eurasia, and their combined role in shaping contemporary national image and statecraft within and beyond the region. It provides critical perspectives on international relations, nationalism, and national identity through the use of innovative approaches focusing on popular culture, new media, public diplomacy, and alternative "narrators" of the nation. By positing popular geopolitics and nation branding as contentious forces and complementary flows, the study explores the tensions and elisions between national self-image and external perceptions of the nation, and how this complex interplay has become integral to contemporary global affairs.

This seminal book explores the complex relationship between popular geopolitics and nation branding among the Newly Independent States of Eurasia, and their combined role in shaping contemporary national image and statecraft within and beyond the region. It provides critical perspectives on international relations, nationalism,

Foreword: [Not] Made in the USSR 1. Of Idols and Idylls: The Question of National Image2. The Supermarket of Nations: Competitive Identity and the Brand State3. The Mind’s Eye: Popular Culture, Geographical Imagination, and International Relations4. A Brand New Eurasia: Places, Spaces, and Peoples of the Post-Soviet Realm5. The Post-Soviet Bogeyman: A Guide to the Dangerous Personae of the Former USSR6. Laughable Nations: Parodying the Post-Soviet Republics7. Mapping Trashcanistan: The Post-Soviet Badlands in Popular Culture, News Media, and Academe8. Branded! Marketing the New Nations of Eurasia to the (Western) World9. Conclusion: Post-Soviet Eurasia: The Once-and-Future Geopolitical Imaginary