Russia’s Parliamentary Discourse on Europe

This paper contextualizes Russian institutional – mainly, parliamentary – discourse on Europe as a case of Europe-wide discursive negotiation and contestation of what Europe is and should be. The analysis relies on the transcripts of debates on regional belonging and regional integration in the State Duma between 2004 and 2017. The paper demonstrates the coexistence of various approaches to the definition of Russia’s place in relation to Europe and, more generally, its discourse on Russia’s geopolitical and civilizational orientation and role. It argues that the Russian discourse shows traits similar to sovereigntist and conservative discourses in other European countries. Its sovereigntism has some similarity with Eurosceptic narratives in Western Europe, but comes closest to that of the Central and Eastern European countries, such as Hungary and Poland. Its increasingly religious conservatism, on the other hand, is opposed to socially liberal, progressive EU discourse and in this is close to neo-catholic traditionalist discourse in Southern Europe and Poland. Neither the sovereigntist nor the conservative discourse by the parliament and other institutional actors in Russia unequivocally distance Russia from Europe. Instead, similarly to discourse in the EU, they propose a view of Europe, which deviates from the mainstream socially liberal version.