Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Russia’s conservative intellectuals, like Alexsandr Dugin and Alexsandr Panarin have claimed that Russia possesses a sovereign right to protect its own politically acceptable standards of civilization, including the relations between the Russian state and its citizens. This move seeks to render West European standards of governance (liberal ideals of democracy, human rights and the rule of international law) alien to Russian society. This process of resistance, and of creating boundaries between Russia and the outside, was reflected in Russian conservative political discourse regarding Russian ‘unique formula of socio-cultural identity of a nation’.
This leads to contemporary Russian political elite challenging the direct applicability of international conventions on Russian soil grounded in an assumption of the supremacy of national legislation over international or supranational laws. For example, 14 July 2015 The Constitutional Court of Russia held that: “As a legal democratic state, Russia is a member of the international community in which principles and norms of international law are generally accepted… However, this does not mean that Russia waives its national sovereignty in relation to the fundamentals of its constitutional order implying supremacy, independence and autonomy of state power. Having in mind that which is set forth above, in a situation when the very content of a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights… touches upon the principles and norms of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, by way of exception Russia may derogate from upholding the obligations imposed on it when such derogation is the only possible way to avoid violations of the fundamental principles and norms of the Russian Constitution.” (Postanovlenie Konstitutsionnogo Suda RF (14 July 2015) No.21-P, Section 2.2, para.3).
This Paper explores this recent intellectual history of Russian conservative political thought. It looks to evaluate how one influential group of public intellectuals has come to imagine the boundaries and values of Russia as a political community. This inquiry covers the evolution of the collective memory of the Russian nation, and why it has become so entwined with the idea of mighty state - ‘derzhava’); the perceptions of political space, particularly since the annexation of Crimea; and changes in construction of the ‘we’ vs. ‘them’ relationship between Russia and the West.
Specifically, this Paper looks at how Russian conservative thinkers have reinvented political ideas of German philosopher C.Schmitt (1888-1985) – ironically, hailing from the West. I analyse how Schmitt’s key concepts of the political in opposition to ideals associated with Western liberalism were framed and reinterpreted. This Paper claims that C.Schmitt’s doctrines of the “decisionism” and definition of political as “friend-enemy relationship” determined contemporary politics of Russian Government and Constitutional Court. I also look at how Russian political philosophers interpret C.Schmitt’s concepts of politics, sovereignty, geopolitics, state, and their relation to individual rights. I then trace how those concepts were developed and framed within official Russian ideological and political rhetoric.
