Description
The ‘narrative turn’ in International Relations theory tends to focus on state identities and sometimes misleadingly equates them with national identities. In this paper, I examine dominant Russian state and national identity narratives that have been used by Putin’s regime to legitimise the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, arguing that although they are in some ways intertwined and mutually supporting, it is important still to distinguish between them. On the state identity side, the invasion itself serves to demonstrate performatively Russia’s great power-ness as well as to secure it through advancing Russia’s perceived security and economic interests in its purported sphere of influence. The historical narrative of Kievan Rus’ as the ancestor of the Russian state is also a legitimising narrative while, in addition, Russia is portrayed as the inheritor of the Soviet Union’s role as defeater of Nazism in the Great Patriotic War with a special duty to weed out any apparent resurgence of Nazism especially in Ukraine. On the other hand, national identity narratives around ‘traditional values’ linked to Orthodoxy position the war within Russia’s wider struggle with the West, and Putin’s understanding of Russian-nesss is used to delegitimise the existence of a separate Ukrainian nation thus denying Ukrainians any right to statehood and claiming Ukrainian territory for the Russian state. I argue that both state and national identity narratives have long-standing roots preceding Putin’s presidencies, although the national identity narratives have been more obviously constructed during that period and also suffer from inherent inconsistencies. While these inconsistencies don’t necessarily weaken their effectiveness, they make them more vulnerable to challenges; but I argue that even the state identity narratives can be challenged in ways that do not undermine Russia’s existence (contrary to the regime’s propaganda) – signifying the possibility of change in the future.
