1989 as a mimetic revolution: Russia and the challenge of post-communism

Various terms have been used to describe the momentous events of 1989, including Jürgen Habermas’s ‘rectifying revolution,’ and my own notion of 1989 as a type of ‘anti-revolution’: repudiating not only what had come before, but also denying the political logic of communist power, as well as the emancipatory potential of revolutionary socialism in its entirety. In the event, while the negative agenda of 1989 has been fulfilled, it failed in the end to transcend the political logic of the systems that collapsed at that time. This paper explores the unfulfilled potential of 1989. Finally, 1989 became more of a counter- rather than an anti-revolution, replicating in an inverted form the practices of the mature state socialist regimes. The paucity of institutional and intellectual innovation arising from 1989 is striking. The dominant motif was ‘returnism,’ the attempt to join an established enterprise rather than transforming it. Thus, 1989 can be seen as mimetic revolution, in the sense that it emulated systems that were not organically developed in the societies in which they were implanted. For Eastern Europe ‘returning’ to Europe appeared natural, but for Russia the civilizational challenge of post-communism was of an entirely different order. There could be no return, and instead of a linear transition outlined by the classic transitological literature, Russia’s post-communism demonstrated that the history of others could not be mechanically transplanted from one society to another

The power of civilizational nationalism in Russian foreign policy making

The article draws upon theories of identity to understand Russian foreign policy towards Ukraine since 2000. The article argues that contemporary Russian foreign policy can be best understood as an articulation of ‘civilizational nationalism’ which relies on the myth of cultural superiority. The focus is on not only treating Russia as an imperial power, but on the cultural claims that this relies upon and its configuration within changing historical ideas of ‘Russianness’. Since the Orange Revolution, Russian presidents have accused Ukraine of following anti-Russian policies. This has been aided by a discourse of ‘civilizational nationalism’ where Ukraine is described as being part of a ‘Greater Russia’, rather than as a sovereign territory. This article analyses how imagined civilization and greatness of Russian culture is driving foreign policy making towards the Ukraine. Rather than an external territory, Ukraine is constructed as a ‘little brother’ which renders interventions legitimate