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ABSTRACT
In contemporary Russia, geopolitical discourses have become more important than political ideology proper, so the “Russian world” concept is rising to the position of an all-embracing ideology, which maintains that Russia is or should be politically and geographically bigger than the Russian Federation. This means that the idea of “spheres of influence” is embedded into the concept. At the same time, the paper argues that the meaning of the “Russian world” has been differently articulated and differently instrumentalized for political purposes during the last 20 years. It would be an oversimplification to believe that “Russian world” has always been a mere synonym for Russia’s neo-imperialist pursuits in the post-Soviet arena. Focusing on discontinuities, the paper identifies three ideological iterations of the “Russian world.” The first was de-territorialized and de-centered imagery of the “Russian archipelago” in the 1990s. The second represents adjustment of the concept to the idea of the “sovereign democracy” in the 2000s, when the logic of the “sphere of influence” was injected into the “Russian world.” Third, in the 2010s, the “Russian world” has been re-territorialized as an irredentist and isolationist project, aligned with the logic of representing Russia as an alternative, non-Western model of modernity. The bottom line of the argument is that in spite of many innovative and potentially progressive connotations, the “Russian world“ concept has displayed a marked tendency towards conservative and anti-Western criticism of globalization, which is characteristic of the logic of the spheres of influence.
Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges valuable comments of the anonymous reviewers and thanks Susanna Hast and Iain Ferguson for their work on the first draft of the paper.
Disclosure Statement
The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the paper.
Notes
1 Nuances of the construction “Russian compatriots abroad” are discussed in Suslov (Citation2017) and Isurin (Citation2011).
2 This number figures in many official and academic Russian sources, e.g. in the speech of Georgii Poltavchenko, St Petersburg’s governor; Russian PM Leonid Slutskii mentions “more than 30 million”; Konstantin Kosachev, the former head of Rossotrudnichestvo, a state agency for relations with compatriots abroad, voices the figure “approximately 30 million” (IV Vsemirnyi kongress sootechestvennikov, prozhivaiushchikh za rubezhom (St Petersburg, 26–27 October 2012). Available at: http://archive.mid.ru/bdomp/Ns-dgpch.nsf/05a95604fc81125843256da400378f3b/358ef0ae26b7a1c044257ae30041068e/$FILE/Сборник+материалов.pdf.
3 These differences appear on the account of the same structural difficulties in defining Russian diaspora, which haunt the political decision-makers: who are those “Russians abroad”? Are they native Russian speakers? Are they emigrants from the Russian Federation? Soviet Union?
9 In Russia, there is a whole industry of researching and publishing on the diaspora’s role in Russia’s international relations. See, for example, Kosachev (Citation2011) and Sporyshev (Citation2012).
10 Vladislav Inozemtsev states that the Russian expats in “far abroad” have created an economic and intellectual community which is comparable to Russia. See Inozemtsev (Citation2015).
11 Cf. Remizov (Citation2016).
12 To specify, here ideology is understood along the lines of Michael Freeden’s theorization: ideology fixes up the meaning of essentially contested concepts. In this way, as I argue, the “Russian world” moves beyond the scope of just a geopolitical concept; instead, it becomes an ideology of sorts, powerfully defining meanings of other concepts such as the “Russian civilization”, “Russia as a great power”, “Russian-speaking compatriots”, etc. On ideology, see Freeden (Citation1998a, Citation1998b).
13 Entry to the blog eugen1962 of 27 December 2012. Available at: http://eugen1962.livejournal.com/130247.html?thread = 1005511; entry to the blog annatubten of 9 January 2013. Available at: http://annatubten.livejournal.com/156254.html; Bolotov (Citation2002). Cf. also a recent investigation by Gogin (Citation2016).
14 “Мы призваны достигнуть слияния мировых начал” (Shchedrovitskii and Ostrovskii Citation1997).
15 ”Россия сжалась, чтобы Русский Архипелаг раздался, разросся, чтобы Русский мир разлился” (Gradirovskii Citation1999).
16 Importantly, Tatiana Zhdanok, a Russian-speaking MEP from Latvia, one of the propagandists of the idea of “Russian Europeans”, is the member of the Basque Friendship Group in the European Parliament.
17 There is also an insufficiently explored connection between the Strugatskiis and the circle of “methodologists”. Cf. Kukulin (Citation2007).
18 “…Десятки миллионов людей, говорящих, думающих, а, может быть – что еще важнее, – чувствующих по-русски, проживают за пределами Российской Федерации”. (Putin Citation2001).
19 Entry to the blog eugen1962 of 11 November 2015. Available at: http://eugen1962.livejournal.com/335644.html (accessed September 26, 2017).
20 “Почаще употребляйте это словосочетание – ‘Русский мир’.” Available at: http://politrussia.com/society/russkiy-mir-918/ (accessed 26 September 2017).
21 Kondrashov (Citation2009); on the metaphor of an “orbit” in the context of the sphere-of-influence ideology: Hast (Citation2014).
22 “…Масштабные нарушения прав русскоязычного населения Латвии и Эстонии”. See: “Doklad o situatsii s obespecheniem prav cheloveka v Evropeiskom Soiuze” (Citation2013).
23 Zor’kin (Citation2015). On the utilization of the human rights discourses in Russia’s foreign policy, see Suslov (Citation2016b).
24 “…Сценарий конструктивного контакта, обмена и взаимодействия с другими цивилизационными моделями человечества, например, англо-саксонской, романогерманской, арабо-исламской, азиатско-тихоокеанской и т. д.” Illiashevich (Citation2008).
25 The rhetoric of civilizations could become a double-edged sword; for example, Vladimir Golyshev, a heterodox religious thinker, writer, blogger and once a team-mate of Gleb Pavlovskii, came up with an idea that emigration from the country, “occupied by the Kremlin’s mafia” is the only way to preserve the Russian civilization outside of its formal borders (Golyshev Citation2007). More on Golyshev: Grishaeva (Citation2016).
26 Interview with Boris Mezhuev, June 1, 2015, from the personal archive of the author.
27 Kononenko (Citation2015). Kononenko is a popular pro-Kremlin blogger.
28 I.e. implicating an idea of national rebirth, characteristic of the “generic fascism” (see, for example: Griffin (Citation2012)).
29 Cf. Dmitrii Medvedev’s (then the President) words, that the “Russian world” is the country’s major resource for its modernization (Petrov Citation2011).
30 “Сейчас приделы русского храма собираются. Крым - это один из приделов Русского мира, Новороссия - такой же важный придел, как и тульская земля”. In Prokhanov, “Sviatost' russkogo oruzhiia”.
31 For an opposite view, see Grigas (Citation2016).
32 See inter alia: Voigt (Citation2008).