Russia s Postcolonial Identity

Russia s Postcolonial Identity

Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations Series Editors Zlatko Šabič (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) Petr Drulák (Institute of International Relations, Prague) The main purpose of this series is to provide and sustain excellence in IR Research in and on Central Europe. It aims to provide readers with high-quality results by scholars who are conducting IR research from the Central and Eastern European (CEE) perspectives that will resonate within the IR community as well as practitioners in and beyond the region. The series is purposely interdisciplinary and welcomes studies which examine IR topics from the CEE perspectives in international politics. These perspectives are shaped by, inter alia, the experience of small states versus great powers interests, regionalisation, national minorities, the role of international institutions, the position between the West and East broadly defined, as well as intellectual traditions. Titles include: Ondrej Ditrych TRACING THE DISCOURSE OF TERRORISM Identity, Genealogy and State Petr Kratochvíl and Tomáš Doležal THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Political Theology of European Integration Viatcheslav Morozov RUSSIA S POSTCOLONIAL IDENTITY A Subaltern Empire in a Eurocentric World Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations Series Series Standing Order ISBN 978 1 137 34600 1 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Russia s Postcolonial Identity A Subaltern Empire in a Eurocentric World Viatcheslav Morozov Professor of EU-Russia Studies, University of Tartu, Estonia

Viatcheslav Morozov 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-40929-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-48859-9 ISBN 978-1-137-40930-0 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137409300 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Contents Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations vi viii Introduction 1 1 The Postcolonial and the Imperial in the Space and Time of World Politics 8 2 Russia in/and Europe: Sources of Ambiguity 38 3 Material Dependency: Postcolonialism, Development and Russia s Backwardness 67 4 Normative Dependency: Putinite Paleoconservatism and the Missing Peasant 103 5 The People Are Speechless: Russia, the West and the Voice of the Subaltern 135 Conclusion 166 Notes 169 Bibliography 173 Index 199 v

Acknowledgements My main source of inspiration for this book has been my wife Elena Pavlova not just as a muse but, more importantly, as a fellow scholar, an expert on Latin American affairs and as the first audience and reviewer of many ideas that ended up being discussed in this text. Earlier drafts of individual parts of this book were presented at a number of academic events. The feedback has always been invaluable, but I am particularly grateful to Alexander Etkind, Dirk Uffelmann and the participants of the conference Postcolonial Approaches to Postsocialist Experiences, held at the University of Cambridge in February 2012. I would also like to thank my fellow members of the PONARS Eurasia network, which provides a friendly environment for free circulation of all sorts of ideas, as well as the most reliable source of expertise on an enormously wide range of topics. My colleagues at the Institute of Government and Politics of the University of Tartu have provided continual support and encouragement through the duration of this project. Some of my key arguments were formulated in my article Subaltern Empire? Toward a Postcolonial Approach to Russian Foreign Policy (Problems of Post-Communism 60(6): 16 28). Fragments of the article have been integrated into the text of the book in a thoroughly revised form. I would like to express my gratitude to the journal s editor Dmitry Gorenburg and to the anonymous reviewers for helping me to frame my case for an audience focusing on International Relations and postcommunist studies. Another publication that is largely a by-product of this project appeared in Russian in the third issue of Russia in Global Affairs in 2014. Fyodor Lukyanov, who invited me to contribute, inadvertently helped me to articulate some important points that I later included in the book manuscript. Financially, my work was supported by the Estonian Research Council, the European Social Fund s Doctoral Studies and Internationalisation Programme DoRa, through the institutional research funding (IUT20 39) of the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research and by the University of Tartu Centre for EU-Russia Studies (CEURUS). Some ideas that are developed in this book were originally formulated while working on another large project the collection entitled Decentring the West: The Idea of Democracy and the Struggle for Hegemony (Ashgate, 2013). vi

Acknowledgements vii I am indebted to all contributors for the new regional and theoretical perspectives that opened up for me while editing that volume. Special thanks to Eoin Micheál McNamara for being a reliable and diligent proofreader. Other friends and colleagues whom I would like to thank personally are Ayşe Zarakol, Bahar Rumelili, Artemy Magun and Richard Sakwa.

Abbreviations BRICS CIS EU G8 IR LGBT MP NATO NGO RSCT RT UN US Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa Commonwealth of Independent States European Union Group of Eight International Relations lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Member of Parliament North Atlantic Treaty Organization non-governmental organization regional security complex theory Russia Today United Nations United States viii