Russia’s National Identity Discourse and its Role in Foreign Policy

Identity determines “who we are” by combining a set of political, social, cultural and historical factors. In the past decade, Europe has been at the forefront of attempts to integrate individuals into a broader community. Unfortunately the events in the European Union (Eurozone crises, migrants, terrorism) have given rise to nationalism, conservatism and countries attempts to “return” their citizens to a particular state of mind or an identity that has been shaped by their native state. By constructing national identity, states also determine their values, goals and interests, which in turn determines their actions in the global community and the way that the state perceives and is being perceived by other international actors – which also is one of the factors that determines the identity of the state in question. For Russia, balancing between Western values and alliances, and its own specific national heritage and ambitions has never been easy, and it seems that every time it appears that Russia is getting closer to the West, it takes two steps away from it and decides in favour of such a foreign policy that best suits its foreign ambitions of returning at least some of the former glory in the international system. Russia’s identity is undoubtedly unique – a lot of effort has been put into preserving traditional russian values and components that make up the notion of identity for this country, such as: interpretation of history, language, culture, political experiences and state policy. Beginning with the year 2000 and the ascendance of Vladimir Putin to the position of the president of Russia, is when the Kremlins policy returned to attempting to prove itself to the West as a reliable and consistent partner but only a few years later the relationship between Russia and its Western partners began deteriorating once again. In my research the emphasis is not as much on the factors that have influenced the formation of national identity in Russia, although they are being taken into consideration, but more on its process of construction in the discourse of the main political agent in Russia – president Vladimir Putin. The main focus of this paper is to comprehend the role of national identity in Russia’s foreign policy and what is the primary objective of such policy. By creating and cultivating a conservative and anti-western national identity, Russia’s elite not only consolidates its power over the society, but simultaneously the national identity that Vladimir Putin has purposefully constructed since 2012 has become a basis a foreign policy, which is based on the constructed national identity. By denying the Western values, Russia and its leader is constructing a unique national identity that is based on russian language, culture and religion and that has become an “excuse” for the conducted foreign policy, that, especially in the past few years has not been acceptable to the Western world and international institutions.