A Very Ambiguous Empire: Russia’s Hybrid Exceptionalism

Abstract

This article will widen existing analyses of Russian imperial narratives through the introduction of the concept of ‘hybrid exceptionalism’, referring to discourses and practices of hierarchy emanating from the country’s liminal position between East and West. In its various—Tsarist, Soviet, contemporary—guises, Russia is posited to have reproduced narratives of hierarchy by formulating civilising missions within a distinct sphere of interest. Transcending political discontinuities, such hierarchical civilising missions have been a defining feature of various Russian worldviews for centuries, and are poised to remain so in the absence of a major redefinition of Russian national identity.