Russia, Europe and the Ontological Security Dilemma: Narrating the Emerging Eurasian Space

Abstract

The aim of this essay is twofold. First, it seeks to examine how Russia and the European Union understand the emerging Eurasian space. We will do this by looking at how the two narrate the space, the use of power and each other. Second, we want to argue that the narratives at the heart of the conceptual and normative maps that guide their actions and behaviour create an essentially ontological security dilemma; that is, behaviour aimed primarily at enhancing confidence in the identity and continuity of a political community threatens the ontological security of other actors.

Notes

1 Or as he calls it in a different way ‘nectars of Eternity’ [that] ‘feed the people’. See Dugin’s VKontakte post from 1 February, 16:31 hours, available at: https://vk.com/duginag, accessed 1 November 2018.

2 ‘So Similar, So Different, So European’, YouTube, 12 February 2012, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jXeRU5w5l8, accessed 26 October 2018.

3 ‘Federal’nyi Zakon Rossiiskoi Federatsii o gosudarstvennoi politike Rossiiskoi Federatsii v otnoshenii sootechestvennikov za rubezhom ot 24.05.1999’, available at: http://www.kremlin.ru/acts/bank/13875, accessed 4 November 2018; see also Laruelle (2015b).

4 Transnistria, while never part of the Soviet Union, is considered as part of ‘Holy Russia’ or the so-called ‘canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate’, which includes Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Kazakhstan.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Viktoria Akchurina

Viktoria Akchurina, Centro Jean Monnet, University of Trento, 38122 Trento, Italy. Email: [email protected]

Vincent Della Sala

Vincent Della Sala, Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, 38122 Trento, Italy. Email: [email protected]