Jakub M. Godzimirski1; 1 Norwegian Institute of International Affairs NUPI, Norway
Discussion
The aim of this paper is to present an innovative examination of what is sometime believed to be the Russian grand strategy implemented by the evolving Putin’s regime paying special attention to various Russian power practices. This approach is inspired by the practice turn in the study of international relations according to which text-based accounts and discourse analysis are useful to understand the preconditions for action but need to be complemented with the study of practices to account for how international politics actually unfolds. In this study I will therefore examine Russian power practices to establish what kind of repertoire of actions exists for a particular type of subject – in this case Russia, in a particular type of context, focusing on Russia’s actions in various areas between 2010 and 2024. The focus is on the increasingly personalistic and authoritarian Putin’s regime in Russia and its power repertoire.
Russia’s search for being recognized as a great power is one of the key ideological drivers of Russian policy under Putin. In this paper I argue that there are obvious attempts at orchestration of the policy of the current regime mostly because Putin’s Russia has been transformed into a semi-authoritarian personalistic regime in which Putin plays a role of an arbiter mediating between various cliques and groups of interests that pursue various goals. These goals are sought achieved through the employment of various types of instruments of power from what can be termed as a specific Russian power repertoire. Repertoire should be in this context understood as a set of available policy performance options and a relatively stable array of tactics that Russia as a great power traditionally employs when competing for influence with other great powers and trying to achieve its strategic objectives. By using this concept to examine continuity, variation, change and innovation in Russian approaches to uses of various instruments of power, this book will provide new interpretation of Russian power politics. I argue that by focusing on Russia’s actual power practices in the specific historical and geographical contexts it will be possible to draw some more general conclusions on Russian understanding of the usefulness of various types of power practices and provide a better understanding of Russian power repertoire.
