POLKVA32 Foreign Policy and Diplomacy Nau - Ollapally (eds.), Worldviews of Aspiring Powers. Oxford University Press 2012 (2 ECTS)
or
POLKVA22 EU External Relations: Security, Economy and Values Renard – Biscop (eds.), The European Union and Emerging Powers in the 21st Century. Ashgate 2012 (2 ECTS)

The course aims to discuss the EU-Russia relations using the concept of identity. The first part of a course will address the issues the EU and European identity and the EU politics of belonging, its conceptual framework and contradictions. The second part of a course will be devoted to the issue of Russia belonging to Europe, the flaws in the perception that effect interactions and expectations from a side of the EU and Russia. The third part of a course will have a format of open discussion where each class participant is entitled to present his/her vision of European and EU identity, Russia’s belonging to Europe and identity politics as a diplomatic tool.

Practical exercises for class attendees include the following: filling in a questionnaire on a topic of European identity; writing an essay on a topic of European and national identity including belonging of Russia to Europe; writing and presenting a statement on identity politics of the EU as a tool in defining relations with various countries and participation in an open discussion.

Reading list suggests prior reading for each of a class in order to organize class in an interactive manner. The goal of a class not to expose the ready-made knowledge, but to evaluate existing expertise, to connect personal vision on a topic and to discuss the complexity of the topic and approaches that are available to study it further.

1. EU and European identity: quest for understanding and fulfilling the promises

The first part of a course will discuss the issues the EU and European identity and the EU politics of belonging, its conceptual framework and contradictions. Identity politics is an important part of the EU activity in defining the belonging of a country to Europe and specifically in terms of partnership and enlargement. European identity became a buzzword for defining the EU belonging on a level of the EU institutions, while not all European citizens, politicians and scientists share the vision that the EU is ‘ideal’ or ‘whole Europe’.

Reading:

Turkuler Isiksel (2018) Square peg, round hole: Why the EU can’t fix identity politics / Brexit and Beyond: Rethinking the Futures of Europe. Editors Benjamin Martill, Uta Staiger. UCL Press, 2018.

The Promise of the EU: Qualitative Survey: Aggregate Report (September 2014). URL: http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/archives/quali/ql_6437_en.pdf

2. Russia is being as a part and being apart of Europe: Russia-EU relations and factors influencing the perception of belonging within and outside

Second part of the course addresses the issue of Russia belonging to Europe and the contradictions the perception might cause on a level of interactions and expectations. Russia is a part of Europe in geographical terms, but for centuries Russians themselves have doubted their own belonging to Europe in political and civilizational terms, not talking about these doubts among Europeans. Since 1991 Russia underwent deep transformation of political, economical and social system. At the beginning of 1990s the majority of Russians had very positive perception of Europe and the EU. The war of 2008 and Ukrainian crisis 2014 dramatically changed the perception of the EU among Russians while the majority of them expressed sense of patriotism and national pride including high level of patriotism expressed by young people.

Reading:

Semenenko, I. (2013), The Quest for Identity: Russian Public Opinion on Europe and the European Union and the National Identity Agenda //Perspectives on European Politics and Society 14, no. 1: 102–122.

Helge Blakkisrud (2016) Blurring the boundary between civic and ethnic: The Kremlin’s new approach to national identity under Putin’s third term /The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000–2015. Editors Pål Kolstø, Helge Blakkisrud. Edinburgh University Press, 2016

3. Politics of European belonging as a practical policy in regard to Russia

The third part of a course will be organised in a format of open discussion. During the discussion each participant will present his/her vision of the importance and the meaning the concept of European belonging in terms of practical policy, priorities, mechanisms and resources that are available to succeed and prioritise.

Reading:

Deriglazova Larisa (2017) How much ‘Europeaness’ remains in Russia? // Anthropological Journal of European Cultures. Special issue. Que reste-t-il de nos amours? The expectations of 1991 revisited. Vol. 26, No. 1 (2017): 75-97.

Marlene Laruelle (2016) Russia as an anti-liberal European civilisation /The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000–2015. Editors Pål Kolstø, Helge Blakkisrud. Edinburgh University Press. 2016.

Additional reading:

Deriglazova «What does it mean to be Russian?“ in essays of Tomsk students studying International Relations, 2006, 2014» / Martin Tamcke (Ed.), Europäische Interaktionsfelder: Erkundungen zu deutsch-russischen Beziehungen /  European Fields of Interaction: Investigations on German-Russian Relations. Studies in Euroculture; 3. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 2018. P. 33–49. (eng)

Pitirim A. Sorokin (1967) The Essential Characteristics of the Russian Nation in the Twentieth Century // The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 370, National Character in the Perspective of the Social Sciences (Mar., 1967), pp. 99-115

Putin's Russia: How It Rose, How It Is Maintained, and How It Might End. (2015) Edited by Leon Aron. American Enterprise Institute, 2015.

Peter Rutland (2016) The place of economics in Russian national identity debates /The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000–2015. Editos Pål Kolstø, Helge Blakkisrud. Edinburgh University Press, 2016.

John Besemeres (2016) A Difficult Neighbourhood: Essays on Russia and East-Central Europe since World War II. ANU Press, 2016. 526 p.

Russia 2025: Scenarios for the Russian Future (2013) Editors Maria Lipman, Nikolay Petrov. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Natalia Zubarevich (2012) Four Russias: rethinking the post-Soviet map. URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/natalia-zubarevich/four-russias-rethinking-post-soviet-map

Further information: dlarisa@inbox.ru