Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, a watershed in post-Cold War relations in Europe, took most observers by surprise. Why did we fail to see this coming—and how can we explain Russia's behavior? This is the starting point for Aliaksei Kazharski's new monograph, Eurasian Integration and the Russian World. The answer, he argues, lies in identity. Neorealist attempts to explain Crimea in terms of Russian “national interest” fail to reflect critically on the identitary agenda: you cannot base your argumentation on national interest unless it is clear what is actually understood by “national.” He thus proposes a social constructivist approach as an indispensable complementary approach.
Kazharski does not analyze the Crimean crisis itself, but concentrates on its immediate backdrop, the period between 2007 and 2013. His book draws on an extensive survey of Russian official and expert discourse (the latter represented by various pro-regime think-tanks, the Orthodox Church, and others). Most scholars who discuss Russian identity have done so in the context of nation-building. Kazharski's focus, however, is on region-building: He seeks to reconstruct how the elite forges a supranational identity through “discourses of cultural and economic regionalisms” (33). Cultural regionalism concerns how the Russian nation has been redefined in civilizational terms: as a “Russian civilization” (russkaya tsivilizatsiya) or a “Russian World” (Russkii mir). Economic regionalism narrows in on one of Putin's pet projects, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which, according to Kazharski, is also an identitary project at heart.
Whereas cultural regionalism foregrounds the nation, economic regionalism is centered on the state. What they have in common, however, is that they defy existing state borders. To Kazharski, boundaries are not just lines drawn on a map and projected into geography through physical demarcation: they are also constructed discursively. Hence, in addition to a clearly-defined Russian Federation, there exist several competing discursively-constructed “Russias” that extend beyond the current state.
In a Russian context, nationalism is seen as a purely political practice—and a highly negative one at that. Civilizationism is, however, dressed in a cloak of “scientificity” that gives it “a naturalized and depoliticized air,” Kazharski argues (57), and is thus much more palatable. This civilizational discourse originated in expert/semiofficial circles, but made inroads into official discourse from the onset of Putin's third term. Notably, in his seminal 2012 text on “the national question,” issued as part of his electoral platform, Putin referred to Russia as a “state civilization” (gosudarstvo-tsivilizatsiya).
A key concept in Kazharski's analysis is “polysemy”—the coexistence of many possible meanings for a single word. Polysemy allows “civilization” to serve as a nodal point for several related identitary discourses, combining the uncombinable: a “romantic-nationalist form of cultural essentialism that appeals to a homogeneous culture” and “ideological ambitions for a heterogeneous, culturally pluralist supranationalism” (112). By keeping the definition of what the “Russian civilization” encompasses blurred, the Kremlin allows for a variable geometry: the Russians (russkie) can interchangeably be construed as an ethnoculturally defined community and as a supra-ethnic entity that is both polyethnic and polyconfessional.
Kazharski's discussion of the “nation as civilization” provides a valuable addition to the large body of literature on how to understand the Russian nation—as an ethnocultural, civic, or imperial community. He demonstrates how ideas and concepts migrated from semi-official discourse to become a staple of the official discourse. Regarding economic regionalism, however, the official discourse has largely remained economic and “depoliticized,” with the identitary aspects featuring primarily in expert discourse. This lack of official endorsement makes Kazharski's argument somewhat less compelling here. Regions as identity projects need more than a geographical frame—but “Eurasia” does not seem to mobilize much emotional identification.
Given his social constructivist approach, it seems surprising that Kazharski should argue that his perspective will provide “a full and correct understanding of the recent dynamics of Russian foreign policy” (8, emphasis added); “a correct interpretation of discourses assembled around Eurasian-civilizationist concepts of Russian identity” (41, emphasis added). As noted in Viacheslav Morozov's excellent introduction to the volume, meaning is always in excess—“there is always more to the world than can be represented in any more or less coherent scheme” (xv). Even Kazharski's extremely rich discussion cannot pretend to provide the “full truth” about Russian identity-building.
This minor criticism aside, Kazharski has delivered a solid and valuable contribution to our comprehension of the evolving understanding of “Russianness.”
