Re-thinking the Russian World construct: Historical roots, conceptual tenets, and contemporary typology

Abstract

This paper examines the evolution of the Russian World construct throughout history and presents a new typology of its post-Soviet development. To this end, critical geopolitics is utilized as a general analytical framework, examining the Russian World as a particular type of geographical imagination. It argues that since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russian World construct has undergone at least four developmental stages, each one characterized by a particular range and design, a set of policies and goals, and instruments to achieve them, all of which reflected and/or drew upon previously established ideational strands. The findings show that in its most current form, the concept has developed into a kind of “catch-all” approach designed to garner support for Russia outside of the potentially narrow confines of the Russian ethnolinguistic community, allowing Moscow to pursue and achieve a wide variety of strategic foreign-policy goals both within and outside of the post-Soviet space.