http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8270-9077
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ABSTRACT
The Baltic Sea region is strategically, economically, and symbolically important for the Russian Federation. Among other things, it hosts the largest Russian speaking population outside of Russia, so it is understandable that the Kremlin has been trying to instrumentalize this diaspora for its geopolitical purposes. The article documents those attempts to mobilize the diaspora, to shape it as a handy and loyal tool for projecting Russia’s soft and hard power abroad, and to fix up its meaning by means of the “Russian world” ideology. At the same time, the paper argues that due to various reasons, such as the diaspora’s structural complexity and ambivalence in attitudes of the Russians inside of their country to the Russians abroad, the diasporic policy has never been consistent and successful. There are still large pockets of loyal pro-Kremlin “compatriots” in the region, but the diasporic policy rather facilitates further disintegration and de-mobilization of the community of the “Russians abroad”.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Mikhail Suslov is Assistant Professor of Russian History and Politics at the University of Copenhagen. His area of research interests includes intellectual and cultural history of Russian ideologies, the Russian Orthodox Church and politics, geopolitical discourses and the new media. His most recent publications are “‘Russian World’ Concept: Post-Soviet Geopolitical Ideology and the Logic of ‘Spheres of Influence’” in Geopolitics (2018) and “The Production of ‘Novorossiya’: A Territorial Brand in Public Debates” in Europe-Asia Studies (2017). He is currently working on two edited volumes as a co-editor: Contemporary Russian Conservatism: Problems, Paradoxes and Dangers (Brill), and The Post-Soviet Politics of Utopia: Language, Fiction and Fantasy in Russia (I.B. Tauris).
ORCID
Mikhail Suslov http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8270-9077
Notes
1 The author acknowledges the valuable comments and painstaking work on the style of the paper by Anke Schmidt-Felzmann and Kjell Engelbrekt.
2 Cf. in the social media, the ‘Russian world’ was mentioned 40,000 times between 22 February and 2 March 2015. The second most popular geopolitical concept ‘Eurasia’ lags behind with only 600 hits for the same period (according to the Integrum Social Media survey, done by the author).
3 The ‘Russian speakers’ here refer only to the people with common (post-)Soviet experience. Western Europeans who know Russian are excluded from calculations, although there have been attempts to substantiate that the very fact of mastering the Russian language changes the mindset of a speaker, who would, thus, unwittingly become a part of the ‘Russian world’ (see Shchedrovitskii, Citation2005a).
4 The Facebook group Rysktalande i Sverige or the online forum named www.sweden4rus.nu can be given as examples.
5 Cf. the proportion of male and female holders of the accounts on social networking platforms, such as, for example, the discussion board ‘Moia Shvetsiia’ on vk.com: https://vk.com/board19235862.
6 For purposes of anonymization, names are rendered as initials; the author keeps the key to the initials.
7 For these statements and further discussion, see http://www.russian.fi/forum/printthread.php?t=1129&page=5&pp=30.
8 For the detailed information on the events, see http://www.rurik.se/index.php.
9 Cf. Rogozin uses the phrase ‘dispersed Russian nation’ in his doctoral thesis (see Rogozin, Citation1998, p. 169).
10 Rogozin is continuing his career in the Military-Industrial Commission of the President of Russia. In 2011 he revived his party KRO under the name ‘Rodina-KRO’.