The quest of a defeated Self - understanding identity management in post-Soviet Russia

Sammanfattning: A certain volatility in regard to Russia’s relationship to the West has characterized international political space since 1991. If Gorbachev and Yeltsin succeeded in negating the Soviet Russian past to thus attempt to make possible an integration with the value community of Western civilizations, Putin has conducted a strategy that initially seemed to be aimed at securing global multipolarity and internationally governing principles of Westphalian sovereignty, non-intervention and territorial integrity. Lately, he has nonetheless engaged Russia in an increasingly aggressive Hobbesian state behavior. Starting from the infamous words of Alexander Wendt - “anarchy is what states make of it” - the following paper investigates the micro effects of an intersubjective understanding of international anarchical culture. Focusing on social identity management and status seeking in international society it suggests that the discursive and cognitive structures that constitute an international macroculture, position and portray the national ‘Self’ in relation to an external ‘Other’ in specific ways thus affecting the cognitively possible social identity management strategies on a micro level.