CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2007
| Author | Onyshkiv, Yuriy |
|---|---|
| Title | A CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH TO THE EXPLANATION OF THE EMERGENCE OF RUSSIA'S NEAR ABROAD |
| Summary | In this thesis the emergence of the ‘near abroad’ concept in the Russian foreign policy after the collapse of the Soviet Union is analyzed. The utilization of this conception by political elites in Russia as a particular assertive foreign policy strategy toward the other former Soviet republics normally leads analysts to link it to Moscow’s continuity of Soviet policies toward their satellite countries. It is argued in the thesis that despite such a reference, the ‘near abroad’ strategy of Russia has a different background in the post-Soviet times. After the breakup of the Soviet Union such assertive foreign policy toward the ‘near abroad’ states was not instrumentally constructed by the political elites. It was instead based on the existing societal construct of the perception of the post-Soviet countries from within Russia as well as generally in the post-Soviet states which are identified by popular discourse there as the ‘near abroad’ countries. In this research, discourse analysis is utilized to make a logical claim which supports the constructivist argument of the impact of ideas on policies. As it appears from the analysis, as a result of psychological, historical and cultural causes the societal consensus on the ‘near abroad’ emerged and this was prior to the political rhetoric utilization of this concept, which rejects the argument of the purely instrumental origin of the ‘near abroad’ and confirms the claims contended on the logical basis. |
| Supervisor | Meszerics, Tamás |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2007/onyshkiv_yuriy.pdf |
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