Narrative Foundations of Reconstructing Russian Strategic Culture Under Putin: The West as the Other

The importance of narratives in constituting Russian strategic culture has been largely neglected. This is due to the common assumption that Russian strategic culture is out there, historically determined, and constant from the Russian Empire through the Soviet Union to Putin’s Russia. This article argues that Russian strategic culture is not “etched in stone,” but a dynamic “context” in the making of which narratives about the past and the present, the Russian self and its others, threats and aspirations play a constitutive role. As such, this article demonstrates how Russian strategic culture is being continuously reconstructed by the Kremlin’s discursive practices in which a set of historical, civilizational, and ideological narratives about the Russian self and the West as a threat form a particular cultural context that reproduces the parameters of the prevailing Russian strategic culture.