Russia's Troubled Identity (original) (raw)
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This paper is dealing with Russian history and how it has affected Russian identity. The paper was turned in as a final paper in a course on Central and Eastern Europe, during a Master in International Realtions. Graded with a B.
Russian national identity: old traumas and new challenges
Published in S. Smyth & C. Opitz (Eds.), Negotiating Linguistic, Cultural and Social Identities in the Post-Soviet World (pp. 87-108). Oxford, UK, Bern, etc.: Peter Lang, 2013. The Chapter analyzes difficulties associated with the academic analysis, socio-political and everyday connotations of Russian national identity, focusing on transformations and challenges it has faced since the end of the Soviet Union. It problematizes Russian national identity as the creation of political and cultural elites, which often failed to engage the masses in a corresponding movement of national revival. The perspective adopted is that of historical phenomenology: Russian national identity is perceived as a dynamic construct shaped by a diachronic historical perspective on the one hand, and a synchronic geopolitical perspective on the other. The Chapter presents a descriptive case study to address the question of what exactly are the main components of Russian national identity and how they structure ethno-national perceptions at the elite and mass levels of society. The conclusions focus on the underdevelopment and amorphousness of the Russian national character, and explain why it has been problematic to situate Russian national identity in an unambiguously defined state-bearing nation or ethnicity.
The Politics of Russian Post-Soviet Identity: Geopolitics, Eurasianism, and Beyond
2011
This dissertation analyzes the Russian post-Soviet foreign policy debate from the point of view of the emergence of two interrelated and mutually reinforcing discourses – discourse on „geopolitics‟ and discourse on „Eurasianism‟. Instead of equating „geopolitics‟ with the post-1993 emphasis on great power competition for territorial control and dismissing „Eurasianism‟ as strategically employed myth-making the way most of the existing literature does, this dissertation views the „geopolitics‟/‟Eurasianism‟ constellation through the prism of the link between Russia‟s post-Soviet foreign policy and its evolving political identity. The discussion is placed within the poststructuralist theoretical framework that stresses identityconstitutive effects of foreign policy discourses and, more broadly, attempts to problematize the sedimentation of the social with the help of the political. In particular, different versions of the „geopolitics‟/‟Eurasianism‟ constellation are analyzed from the...
Inside Out Identities: Eurasianism and the Russian World.
Inside Out Identities: Eurasianism and the Russian World. In: Friess, N. / Kaminskij, K. (eds.), Resignification of Borders: Eurasianism and the Russian World. Berlin 2019, p. 7-20., 2019
Eurasianism is framing and reframing the experience of the Soviet modernization project and the Eurasian integration process by renegotiating Russian identity in its complex relationship to Europe and Asia. Eurasianism is not a fixed identity narrative. It is a fluent renegotiation process turning cultural semantics inside out. There is a pressing need for integrative narratives and inclusive cultural semantics. With this in mind one should ask the question, “What might the future of Eurasianism look like now, as it managed to emancipate itself from the Russian World?”
Since the end of the Cold War Russia has been treated as a defeated state. Western countries usually perceive Russia not only as a defeated state but also relating it to Soviet Union. Beyond that the West has Orientalized Russia, segregating it from the “western club” of developed states. But Russia’s recovery from the collapse of the 90’s made it more assertive towards the West. It’s proposed here that this assertiveness is due to it’s orientalization, it’s inferior status perceived by the West. The inferior perception by the West has triggered a process of identity’s reconstruction which will be analyzed through a perspective of ontological security. The more Russia has it’s great power status denied, the more aggressive it becomes regarding it’s foreign policy. As the international hierarchy continues to treat Russia as that of “behind” the modern states, and the more it feels marginalized, it will double down on efforts to regain its great power status it will have to dispose power. Russia’s ontological insecurity might lead it to a path of aggressiveness.
The paper focuses on the analysis of political discourse of Russia’s civilizational identity since perestroika period. Political debates on civilizational identity have passed through certain turns and phases: the great passage from the Soviet aggressive anti-Westernism to the radical Westernism in perestroika; the opposition to Westernism and rise of Slavophilia and nationalistic representations in late 1980s — early 1990s; the coexistence of moderate Westernism, nationalistic representations and the turn toward Eurasianism in the mid-1990s; the proclaimed civilizational distinctiveness in late 1990s and the attempts to construct an integral though ambivalent identity which synthesizes the universal / Western with the original/ Russian in 2000s. At the core of this ambivalence one finds the contradiction of “Westernization and modernization” and of “global and local”. By building market economy, democracy and supporting human rights, which constitute the basic cultural and institutional programme of the Western modernity, Russia has acknowledged the deep-rooted connection with the West. However, this programme, though having been accepted, is constantly problematized and reinterpreted in the discourse by appeals to Russia’s “special path” and civilizational “uniqueness”.