The significance of these four factors in shaping Russian foreign policy has been highlighted over the years by various scholars writing on Russian history and politics. Leading western historians of Russian national and imperial identity, such as Geoffrey Hosking (1998, 2001), Hugh Seton-Watson (1989), Vera Tolz (2001) and Ronald Suny (2001), have each discussed some of these factors, which, in their eyes, have been drivers of Russian foreign policy since the time of Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and the Napoleonic wars. Other scholars, focusing on post-imperial Russia, have variously detected the same factors in Soviet foreign policy making (Dallinn 1960; Ulam 1968; Bialer 1981; Nation 1993) and also in post-Soviet foreign policy (Petro and Rubinstein 1996; Donaldson and Nogee 2009; Legvold 2009; Trenin 2011).
The discussion in this chapter of Russian foreign policy throughout its history is by necessity brief and selective. However, it provides essential context and background for the book’s central argument: the recent military revival did not occur in a vacuum. It can only be understood within the context of relevant developments in Russian foreign policy and the role of the military within it.
Great power status
There has always been a strong contradiction between the way others see Russia and how Russia perceives itself. This tension has been one of the central drivers of the country’s foreign policy. As Iver Neumann has written, ‘from early contacts between Muscovy and the Holy Roman Empire through the rapid increase in contact during and following Peter the Great’s reign and finally during the Soviet period, Russia has tried to be recognized by the leading European powers as their equal’ (2008: 128). Throughout its existence, Russia occupied vast expanses of the Eurasian land mass and it has been recognized in the past as both an Asiatic empire and a European great power. For some forty years during the Cold War it enjoyed global superpower status. The country’s history, strongly influenced by geography and geopolitics, has resulted in the understanding that Russia’s destiny is to be a great power. The self-perception as a great power has been a constant feature in the country’s identity. This did not change with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when the Russian Federation emerged as a newly independent country characterized by weak statehood, a struggling economy and dishevelled armed forces. As Margot Light noted, in the years following the end of the Cold War, ‘Russia was clearly not a superpower; indeed, it was questionable whether it was a Great power. Yet to ordinary people, as well as to politicians, it was unthinkable that Russia could be anything less than this’ (2010: 229).
In contrast to Russia’s own views on its place in the world, in the West and elsewhere there was not an automatic assumption that it would inherit the Soviet Union’s global power status. As a result, during the 1990s, Moscow’s ongoing quest to maintain its great power status based on its historical self-perception was largely sidelined in Western debates. If the issue of status was addressed at all, discussions focused on whether the country could still be regarded as a great power, and if so, on what grounds (Adomeit 1995; Neumann 1996; Hedenskog et al. 2005). Although for Russia itself, accepting the loss of great power status was never an option at any point during the post-Soviet years (Neumann 2008: 128–9), Western observers only started to pay attention to the significance of Moscow’s self-perception as such a power during the first decade of the 2000s (Clunan 2009; Light 2010; Feklyunina 2012; Forsberg et al. 2014; H. Smith 2016).
In order to understand the centrality of great power status in foreign policy, an awareness of how the concept is understood in Russia itself is important. Derzhavnost’ literally translates as ‘greatpowerness’ and originates in the word derzhava. This can signify both ‘state’ and ‘power’, so another good translation would be ‘the quality of being a power’ (Papkova 2008: 70). E. Wayne Merry has described derzhavnost’ as ‘a belief in the primacy and greatness of the Russian state raised almost to the level of a secular religion’ (2016: 29). The term has a strong association with the tsarist past and with a powerful state led by a strong ruler. Thus the concept links the past to the present and symbolizes a strong state abroad as well as at home. As Igor Orlov has explained, ‘derzhavnost’ should be understood as the characteristics of a country with political, economic, military and spiritual power in the world, as well as the ability to influence and apply pressure in international relations. It is also a specific ideological construct that reflects the extent of consciousness, political weight, economic and military power of a country. It is present in all aspects of society’ (2006).
In the post-Soviet period it was General Alexander Lebed who explicitly introduced the concept of great power status into popular political discourse, during his campaign for the presidency in 1996. The concept grounded his electoral campaign in a positive image of the past and provided a future vision for Russia. Great power status, according to Lebed’s vision, signified the restoration of Russia’s prestige through the creation of conditions in the country that were worth defending and where the state would serve the nation. A strong and effective military, whose major purpose would be to defend the motherland, was a central condition for the achievement of his vision (Allensworth 1998: 51–2, 55). Lebed’s popularity, which led some observers to believe that he was the ‘warrior who would rule Russia’ (Lambeth 1996), demonstrated that his vision resonated positively in Russian society. When Putin was elected president, he too, identified great power status as a central Russian value (Kolstø 2004).
Within this context, Russia’s recent military revival needs to be understood as a part of the drive to reassert the country’s great power status. Military power is not the only factor on which a country’s status in the international system is based, and other strengths, such as economic might and prosperity, are also important. However, military power has always been an indispensable characteristic and symbol for any global power. For Russia, too, having a strong military has been an essential ingredient in the country’s quest for international status recognition, especially during periods when it could not compete with other global powers in other areas. It was military might that made the Tsarist Empire and during the Cold War, too, it was the Soviet Union’s ability to project military power on a global level that elevated the country to the position of one of the world’s two superpowers. During the final years of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev sought to steer the country away from its focus on military strength for global competition and set out to pursue a wider variety of tools for reasserting the Soviet Union’s status. As a part of his New Thinking, foreign policy concepts like the idea of the ‘Common European Home’, interdependence, universal values and all-human interests were used to emphasize the country’s international status. Gorbachev’s understanding that the prohibitive costs resulting from the maintenance of Soviet military power would undermine the country’s viability and status in the long term was an important factor in this decision (Brown 1996: 222).
In the early 1990s Yeltsin continued on the course of restoring Russia’s great power status not primarily through military might, but through pursuing political stability and cooperation with the West. He, too, was unable to achieve this. Political instability, such as the constitutional crisis in 1993, corruption, military failures in the first Chechen War and an obviously failing economy all projected an image of Russia as a weak state and a country in decline. Both Gorbachev and Yeltsin are still remembered in Russia today for allowing the country’s status to decline (H. Smith 2014).