Authors

Barbara Roggeveen¹;  ¹ University of Oxford, UK

Discussion

Claims to a regional identity within the ‘Eurasian’ sphere are increasingly common in Russian foreign policy discourse. The proposed paper explores the discursive construction of ‘Eurasian’ space in Russian foreign policy language between 2000 and 2020. The paper combines qualitative and quantitative text analysis tools to analyze a corpus of 1,709 policy documents, consisting of speeches, interviews, and official statements from Russian government officials, presidential and ministerial documents, and State Duma records drawn from online government archives, presidential databases, and ministerial websites. Adopting Henri Lefebvre’s theory on the production of space, I explore the ways in which spatial subjectivities are used to write a ‘Eurasian’ identity into being in Russian foreign policy texts between 2000 and 2020. I trace two main narratives surrounding a Eurasian spatial identity. First, I explore the ways in which various Russian landscapes (the steppe, the Volga region, the Urals) are presented as constitutive of a Eurasian Self. Second, I explore the narrative surrounding Russia’s ‘spatial mission’ in the East through which foreign policy actors present their country as a benevolent force that fosters unity across the Eurasian sphere. I focus specifically on the ways in which the notion of ‘Eurasian’ space is used to formulate a territorially bounded identity that reaches eastward beyond the post-Soviet region.