Identity Debates and the Evolution of Russia's Foreign Policy

پژوهش نامه ایرانی سیاست بین الملل

Article 2, Volume 2, Issue 4, January 2015, Pages 23-43   

Document Type: مقالات

DOI: 10.22067/jipr.v2i4.44308

Authors

Sajad Bahrami Moghadam^* ; Ali Asghar Sotoudeh

University of Guilan

Abstract

Russia is concerned with the old question of ‘what is Russia?’ Russians’ answers to this question have influenced the country’s foreign policy directions. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the debate over Russia’s identity and its foreign policy goals has escalated .In 1992, the political elite that identified itself with liberalism, accompanying Kozyrev, joined Yeltsin in itself efforts to make Russia into a liberal democratic market economy and a willing ally of Western hegemony in the world. The liberals were, however, challenged by Slavists and Eurasianists, and finally fell from power. With the rise of Eurasianists, Russia's foreign policy has been changed. By the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium, a new Russia was emerged that no longer defined itself in Western or Eurasian terms, but instead sees itself as restoring Russia’s “natural” identity. Accordingly, the direction of Russian foreign policy has changed once again. In this article, internal debates over Russia’s national identity and its impact on the country’s foreign policy has been discussed. The question is what the impacts of Russia’s identity layers on its foreign policy are. The hypothesis is that different layers of Russia’s identity, that is, Slavism, Eurasianism, Atlantism as well as the so-called authentic Russian identity, have given rise to different “ought”s in its foreign policy.

Keywords

Russia; foreign policy; Slavism; Eurasianism; Atlantism; identity

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