Identity Debates and the Evolution of Russia's Foreign Policy

Document Type : مقالات

Authors

• Sajad Bahrami Moghadam
• Ali Asghar Sotoudeh

University of Guilan

https://doi.org/10.22067/jipr.v2i4.44308

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

References

اسمیت، ک. (1391). نظریه های روابط بین الملل (ترجمه ح. مشیر زاده و ر. طالبی آرانی). تهران: انتشارات میزان.

بیلینگتون، ج.( 1385). روسیه در جستجوی هویت خویش (ترجمه ایراس). تهران: انتشارات ایراس..

پریماکوف، ی. (1391). دنیا بدون روسیه (ترجمه ایراس). تهران: انتشارات ایراس.

دهشیار، ح. (1392). شیوه روسی مذاکره با آمریکا. روزنامه شرق، ص 16 ، 1913.

زیفرت، آ. و نااومیکن، و. (1390). سال‌هایی که آسیای مرکزی را تغییر داد (ترجمۀ م. سنایی و ع.ر. عیاری).

سنایی، م. و کرمی، ج. (1385). روابط ایران و روسیه (مجموعه مقاله). تهران: انتشارات ایراس.

لیتل، ر. و اسمیت، م. (1391). دیدگا‌ههایی درباره سیاست جهان. (ترجمه ع. طیب). تهران: انتشارات علمی و فرهنگی.

مشیرزاده، ح. (1385). تحول در نظریه های روابط بین الملل. چاپ دوم. تهران: انتشارات سمت.

Adayev, E. (1992). Russia: between the North and the South. Moscow News, No. 10.

Adomeit, H. (1995). Russia as a “great power” in world affairs: images and reality, International affairs. 71(1), pp. 35–68.

Arbatov, G. (1993). Russia’s foreign policy alternatives, International security. 18(2), pp. 5–43.

Aron, L. (1998). The Foreign policy doctrine of postcommunist Russia and its domestic context. in Mandelbaum, M. (ed.) (1998). The new Russian foreign policy, Council on Foreign Relations. New York.1998.

Aron, L. & Jensen, M .(2004). The Emergence of Russian Foreign Policy. Washington D. C.: United States Institute of Peace Press.

Aron, L .(2013).The Putin Doctrine, Foreign Affairs, 23(4).

Azuolas, B. (2012). Russia’s interests Syrian conflict: power, prestige, and profit. European journal of economic and political studies. 5(2), pp. 55-77.

Bazhanov, E. (1999). Russian policy toward China. in Shearman, P. (eds.). Russian foreign policy since 1990. Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press.

Berg, E., & Ehin, P.(2013). Identity and foreign policy: Baltic-Russian relations and European integration. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Chafetz, G. (1996–1997). The struggle for a national identity in Post-Soviet Russia, Political science quarterly. 111(4), pp. 661–88.

Clowes, E. (2011). Russia on the Edge: Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity. New York: Cornell University Press.

Crow, S. (1992). Russia debates its national interests. RFE/RL Research Report, No. 28.

Crow, S. (1992). Russia's relations with members of the Commonwealth. RFE/RL Research Report, No.19.

Dobriansky, J. (2000). Russian foreign policy: promise or peril?. The Washington Quarterly. 23(1), pp. 135–44.

Drezner, D. (2001). Allies, adversaries, and econimic coercion: Russian foreign ecoomic policy since 1991. Security Studies, 6(3), pp. 65-111.

Dimitri, T. (2013). The mythical alliance, Russia’s Syria policy. Carnegie Moscow Center. Availabl at:http://carnegie.ru/2013/02/12/mythical-alliance-russia-s-syria-policy/ffl4. (accessed on 2014, July 17).

Garnett, S. (1997). Russia's illusory ambitions. Foreign affairs. 76(2) .pp. 61-76.

Gordon, H. (2006). The perils of Putin’s policies. The Journal of International Security, 10.

Gorodetsky, G. (ed.). (2013). Russia between East and West: Russian Foreign Policy on the Threshhold of the Twenty-First Century. London: Rutledge.

Hill, F. (2006). Moscow Discovers Soft Power. Current History. 30(2), pp. 341–34.

Hill, F. (2013). The Real Reason Putin Supports Assad. Foreign Affairs. 25. Available at :http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139079/fiona-hill/the-real-reason-putin-supports-assad, (accessed on 2013, March 28).

Hopf, T. and ed. (1999). Understandings of Russian foreign policy. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Hopf, T. (2002). Social construction of international politics: identities & foreign policies, Moscow, 1955 and 1999. New York: Cornell University Press.

Hopf, T. (2009). Russia’s place in the world an exit option?. Available at: http://www.russiavotes.org/security/security_russia_place.php, (accessed on 2013, Jan 28).

Hopf, T. (2013). Common Sense Constructivism and Hegemony in World Politics. International Organization, 67(2), pp. 317-354.

Kapstein, E. (eds.) (1999). Unipolar Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.

Kent, J. M. (2013). From separationism to theocracy: how the domestic relationship between religion and state conditions the salience of religion in foreign policy (Doctoral dissertation).

Kozhemiakin, A. (1997). Democratization and foreign policy change: the case of the Russian Federation. Review of International Studies, 23(1), pp. 49–74.

Kozhemiakin, A. (1998). Expanding the zone of peace? democratization and international security. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press.

Legvold, R. (2001). Russia's unformed foreign Policy. Foreign affairs, 80(5), pp. 6275-6293.

Legvold, R. & eds. (2007). Russian Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century and the Shadow of the Past. New York: Columbia University Press.

Light, M. (2001). Post-Soviet Russian Foreign policy: the first decade. in Brown, A. (eds.). Contemporary Russian politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lynch, A. C. (2001). The realism of Russia’s foreign policy’. Europe-Asia Studies, 53(1), pp. 7–31.

MacFarlane, N. (2002). Realism and Russian strategy after the collapse of the USSR.

Malcolm, N. Pravda, A., Allison, R. & Light, M. (1996). Internal factors in Russian foreign policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mandelbaum, M. (1998). The New Russian Foreign Policy. Council of Foreign Relations. New York.

Mankoff, J. (2009). Russian foreign policy: the return of great power politics. New York: Rowman Publishers.

Prizel, I. (1998). National Identity and Foreign Policy: Nationalism and Leadership in Poland, Russia and Ukraine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Robinson, N. (2013). Power and policy in Putin's Russia. Journal of contemporary European studies. 21(2), 325-326.

Shearman, P. (1995). Russian Foreign Policy Since 1990. Oxford: Westview Press.

Toft, P. (2004). The way of the vanquished. work in progress. Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen.

Tsygankov, A. (1997). From international institutionalism to revolutionary expansionism: the foreign policy discourse of contemporary Russia. Mershon International Studies Review, 41(2), pp. 247–68.

Tsygankov, A. P. (2013). Russia's foreign policy: change and continuity in National Identity. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.