Russia as a great power

Abstract

This paper explores historically Russia's status as a great power in first the European and later the global states system. It argues that its role as a ‘superpower’ was really a temporary aberration during the Cold War period and that since the collapse of the Soviet Union Russian foreign policy has been essentially guided by the desire to reaffirm its great power status and emergence as an energy superpower centred on the export of oil and gas. Western policy towards Russia needs to be guided by a far more sophisticated awareness of this transformation and a greater understanding of the importance of the symbols of power and status that might look rather dated and backward looking in terms of the construction of regional European security and the ‘post-national’ project of the European Union.

Keywords:

• great power
• slavophiles
• orientalism
• occidentalism
• realpolitik
• nomenklatura
• superpower

Notes

 1. For a review of this debate see Yekelchyk, ‘Interpreting Russia's Imperial Dimension’.

 2. See, for example, Lucas, The New Cold War.

 3. Craig and George, Force and Statecraft, 3.

 4. Craig and George, Force and Statecraft, 5.

 5. In Scotland, for example, there was the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320. In the Declaration the Scottish nobles and clergy claimed that Robert Bruce was King of Scotland not on the basis of the traditional notion of the Divine Right of Kings but because the nation had chosen him and could in turn choose another king if they were betrayed by the king.

 6. Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime, 86.

 7. While this political interpretation continues to dominate debate about Russian national identity and statehood, alternative interpretations based on Russian myths of landscape and map making are now beginning to develop with in Russian studies. Valerie Kivelson in an important study has suggested that ‘spatial and territorial thinking contributed to shaping a more interactive, inclusive polity than has generally been imagined in discussions of Muscovy under Romanov autocrats’ (Cartographies of Tsardom, 11). This has important implications for work on later period of Russian history and the imagination of landscape.

 8. Berlin, ‘The Counter Enlightenment’ in Berlin, The Proper Study of Mankind, 243–68. See also Pipes, Russian Conservation.

 9. Berlin, ‘The Counter Enlightenment’ in Berlin, The Proper Study of Mankind, 112.

10. A number of Russian writers attacked Catherine for her hypocrisy in corresponding with French Enlightenment intellectuals while still maintaining the system of serfdom inside Russia. The poet Pushkin called her a ‘Tartuffe’ in petticoats (Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great, 581).

11. See in particular Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia.

12. Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime, 114.

13. Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great, 583.

14. Metternich's diplomatic role in the creation of such a new post-war order was the subject of Henry Kissinger's admiring Harvard doctoral dissertation.

15. Billington, The Icon and the Axe, p. 266.

16. Craig and George, Force and Statecraft, 34.

17. English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 21–2.

18. Malia, Russia Under Western Eyes, 156–7; Longworth, Russia's Empires, 203–4.

19. Malia, Russia Under Western Eyes, 159.

20. Longworth, Russia's Empires, 210.

21. Grau, The Bear Went over the Mountain.

22. Longworth, Russia's Empires, 190.

23. Cited in Longworth, Russia's Empires, 199.

24. Malia, Russia Under Western Eyes, 98–103.

25. Cited in Malia, Russia Under Western Eyes, 100.

26. Susan Layton, ‘Nineteenth Century Russian Mythologies of Caucasian Savagery’ in Brower and Lazzerini, Russia's Orient; Layton, Russian Literature and Empire.

27. Lieven, Empire, 212.

28. Lieven, Empire, 275.

29. Kelly, Lermontov: Tragedy in the Caucasus, 52–3. See also Sharafuddin, Islam and Romantic Orientalism.

30. Layton, ‘Nineteenth Century Russian Mythologies of Caucasian Savagery’, 82; See also Said, Orientalism.

31. Layton, ‘Nineteenth Century Russian Mythologies of Caucasian Savagery’, 82, 96. See also Jersild, Orientalism and Empire, 60–1 and passim.

32. Malia, Russia Under Western Eyes, 164.

33. Jersild, ‘From Savagery to Citizenship’, 101–11.

34. Lieven, Empire, 283.

35. See in particular Fox, The Super-Powers.

36. Clayton, The British Empire as a Super Power.

37. Brzezinski, The Great Chessboard, 6.

38. I am indebted to the late Gerry Segal for this formulation.

39. Dibb, The Soviet Union: The Incomplete Superpower, 67.

40. Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.

41. See Dibb, The Soviet Union: The Incomplete Superpower, 265 and passim.

42. Valerie Bunce, ‘Transforming Russia’.

43. Trimberger, ‘A Theory of Elite Revolutions’.

44. English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 213–15.

45. English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 208–9.

46. English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 227.

47. An approach suggested by Naomi Cline, The Shock Doctrine, though her attempts to support it by such wide-ranging and disparate examples as Chile, South Africa and Russia remain rather unconvincing.

48. Aslund, Russia's Capitalist Revolution, 83.

49. Aslund, Russia's Capitalist Revolution, 102.

50. Aslund, Russia's Capitalist Revolution, 105.

51. Litvinenko, Blowing Up Russia, xxii–xxiii. Litvinenko argues that the two figures who were especially prominent in saving the old KGB from destruction – Yevgeny Savostianov and Sergei Stepashin were supposedly democrats – were, in fact, infiltrated into the democratic movement by the security services (p. xxiii).

52. Litvinenko, Blowing Up Russia.

53. Litvinenko, Blowing Up Russia, 8.

54. For details, see Grau and Jorgensen, Viral Hepatitis and the Russian War in Chechnya.

55. Cohen, ‘Domestic Factors Driving Russian Foreign Policy’.

56. For details on Dugin's life and thought, see Ingram, Alexander Dugin: Geopolitics and Neofascism in Post-Soviet Russia.

57. Olga Koulieri, ‘Russian “Eurasianism” & the Geopolitics of the Black Sea’.

58. See Clark, An Empire's New Clothes, 273–4.

59. See Clark, An Empire's New Clothes, 286.

60. Trenin, The End of Eurasia. See also Shevtsova, Russia Lost in Transition.

61. Sakwa, Putin: Russia's Choice, 228–9.

62. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 814.