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Abstract
The essay analyses Russia’s historical goals in Eurasia and argues that the geopolitical meaning of Russia’s annexation of Crimea is closely related to the Kremlin’s ambition to play a key role in structuring the region. Russia’s determination to remain a major power, along with the global power transition from the West-centred to an increasingly regionalised world, make Russia’s return to Eurasia important. The return to Eurasia has demonstrated its promise to facilitate increased commercial relations within the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) as well as with China and other Asian countries. The future of Eurasia and Russia’s role in the region remain uncertain, however, because major participants are yet to align their visions of Eurasia, while Russia itself has yet to consolidate its internal economic and state capabilities.
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Notes
1 For various critiques of this explanation, see Tsygankov (Citation2012, Citation2015) and Götz (Citation2017, pp. 230–36).
2 As this essay was originally written before the 2022 war, an addendum discusses briefly whether the approach presented here can explain, or at least contribute to a better understanding of Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
3 As John LeDunne writes, ‘their [Russians’] only interest was to impose the empire’s supremacy in Europe and Asia’ (LeDunne Citation2004, p. 141).
4 In this essay, securitisation is associated with viewing domestic institutions through the lens of national security and survival. For a theoretical analysis of securitisation, see, for example, Balzacq et al. (Citation2016) and Baysal (Citation2020).
5 The Avars were a Caucasian group seeking to dominate the neighbouring region (Smith Citation2019, p. 77).
6 The historian Mikhail Pogodin calculated that of the 170 years following the death of Yaroslav, 80 of them were spent in civil war (Tsygankov Citation2015, ch. 3).
7 The roots of this myth as developed in the work of Richard Pipes can be traced to Custine (Peris Citation2021). Smith (Citation2019) aptly refers to it as the ‘black legend of Russian history’.
8 For analysis of the ‘Russian Idea’ as a national ideology, see Tsygankov and Tsygankov (Citation2010).
9 An early example of geoeconomic thinking was Sergei Rogov’s (Citation1998) proposal to build a strategy based on Russia’s development as a ‘communication bridge’ linking Eurasia’s southern, western and eastern peripheries through various transportation routes—land, air and water—and infrastructure projects.
10 On the linking of the BRI and EAEU and Sino–Russian relations more generally, see Jeffrey Mankoff’s contribution to this special issue.
11 To quote Putin directly, ‘in the Soviet period a lot was done that was not very good, but a lot of good things were invented. For example, there was the concept of the Soviet people, a new historical community’ (‘Putin Appeals for Soviet-style Idea to Consolidate Russian Society’, BBC Monitoring International Reports, 16 August 2012).
12 For details of the post-Soviet Eurasianist debate, see Tsygankov (Citation2008).
13 For various explanations of Russia’s actions in Crimea, see McFaul (Citation2014, Citation2020), Mearsheimer (Citation2014), Götz (Citation2017), Forsberg and Mäkinen (Citation2019).
14 For more on Russia–EU relations in post-Soviet Eurasia, see Tom Casier’s contribution to this special issue.
15 ‘Ukraine Protests after Yanukovych EU Deal Rejection’, BBC, 30 November 2013, available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25162563, accessed 27 September 2022.
16 For Russia–Middle Eastern relations, see Katz and Casula (Citation2018).
17 For the decline of the West-centred international order in Eurasia, see Cooley (Citation2019).
18 For analyses of this notion of sovereignty, see Paris (Citation2020) and Lewis (Citation2020).
19 ‘Pompeo Signs Deal to Redeploy Troops from Germany to Poland’, BBC, 15 August 2020, available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53792019, accessed 14 March 2022.
20 For other analyses of Russia in emerging Eurasia, see Libman and Vinokurov (Citation2012), Molchanov (Citation2015), Vasilyeva and Lagutina (Citation2016), Diesen (Citation2017), Wilson (Citation2017), Lewis (Citation2018), Pieper (Citation2018), Kotlyakov and Shuper (Citation2019), Malle et al. (Citation2020), Shakhanova and Garlick (Citation2020), Izotov and Obydenkova (Citation2021).
21 For critical perspectives on the EAEU and ‘greater Eurasia’, see, for example, Lewis (Citation2018) and Stronski (Citation2020).
22 Anonymous interviews with researchers at Blagoveshchensk State Pedagogical University and at the Far Eastern State University, 22 and 17 December 2020, respectively.
23 For more on Russo–Turkish relations in post-Soviet Eurasia, see Seçkin Köstem’s contribution to this special issue.
24 ‘Crimea’, Levada Centre, 19 May 2021, available at: https://www.levada.ru/en/tag/crimea/, accessed 30 May 2021.
25 ‘Under Siege. The Kremlin Has Isolated Russia’s Economy’, The Economist, 24 April 2021.
26 ‘Why the Russian Economy Keeps Beating Expectations’, The Economist, 23 August 2022.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Andrei Tsygankov
Andrei Tsygankov, International Relations Department, College of Liberal and Creative Arts, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA. Email: [email protected]