Can the post-Soviet think? On coloniality of knowledge, external imperial and double colonial difference

The article considers the main challenges faced by the post-Soviet social sciences in the global configuration of knowledge, marked by omnipresentcoloniality. In disciplinary terms this syndrome is manifested in the social sciences/ versus area studies divide from which the post-Soviet is either excluded or equalized with postcolonial discourses. The situation can be described as a general invisibility of the post-Soviet space and its social sciences and scientists for the rest of the world and the refusal of the global North to accept the post-Soviet scholar in the capacity of a rational subject. The reasons for this complex intersection of the post-Soviet, postcolonial and other post-dependence factors are both internal and external, political and epistemic. Following the methodological principles of decolonial option the author analyses such specific elements of the post-Soviet stagnant configuration in knowledge production as the external imperial difference and the double colonial difference, the geo-politics and body-politics of knowledge the way they are reflected in the knowledge production and distribution, paying specific attention to the possible ways out of this epistemic dead-end.