CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Reshetnikov, Anatoly Valeryanovich |
|---|---|
| Title | The Evolution of Russia's Great Power Discourse: A Conceptual History of Velikaya Derzhava |
| Summary | Today, Russia is yet again talking about being a great power. Such rhetoric emerges in almost every programmatic text written by Russian politicians, as well as in every forecast and policy analysis prepared by Russian state-affiliated think-tanks. Most western observers perceive this as a question of foreign policy and treat Russia’s claims with suspicion. At a closer look, however, it becomes evident that, instead of having an exclusive connection to foreign policy, Russia’s great power discourse is self-centered, defensive, ideological, and relates equally, if not more, to the causes of Russian domestic consolidation and catch up development. In this study, I argue that the origins of this inherent ambivalence and specific functions of Russia’s great power discourse should be sought in the conceptual evolution of velikaya derzhava, a Russian political concept that is usually translated as ‘great power’. In its current shape, velikaya derzhava is a product of both the evolution of local political culture, and Russia’s discursive encounters with external political environment, the most consequential of which was Russia’s lengthy and troubled integration into the European society of states in the XVIII and the XIX centuries. While before the XIX century, Russian and European ideas about political greatness and power could be said to develop on collinear tracks, sometimes converging, but sometimes drifting apart from each other, in the XIX century, there emerged an important diversion between the two. In Europe, different genealogically related versions of political glorification were synthesised into the story of progress, which was universalist, but not essentialist. While it postulated the existence of the family of mankind developing in one common direction, the position of each individual polity on that axis was to be established based on rigorous civilizational analysis and comparison. In Russia, that synthesis proceeded differently. Instead of fully rejecting the progressive paradigm, or, on the contrary, adopting it in its entirety and accepting the role of a learner, Russia seems to have internalised the Western discursive framework, but did not find a way to relate to it unproblematically. Viewed as an ambivalently positioned latecomer from within the progressivist paradigm, Russia never came to terms with that role, refused to leave the club altogether, but was also unable to greatly improve its relative position vis-à-vis the core (if measured by the core’s standards). Consequently, it ended up oscillating between the two poles: (1) the forceful assertions of its own greatness (retrieved in different genealogical variations from its cultural image bank), and (2) the acute realisations of its underdevelopment, which was supposed to be mitigated through an emergency modernization program that Russia was believed to be capable of, empowered by the ideology of being a velikaya derzhava. This created an uneasy tension in Russia’s self-image, as well as in its interactions with the outside world. That failed synthesis continues to shape Russia’s great power discourse until today. |
| Supervisor | Astrov, Alexander |
| Department | International Relations PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/reshetnikova.pdf |
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