Between West and East: Political Culture and Cycle in Russian Foreign Policy after the Cold War

Abstract

One of the most controversial problems, which Russian society faced after the disintegration of the USSR, was the issue of the cultural-historical identity. In other words, Russian people, including the political elite, up to the present time, are lost in the controversy of the West-East opposition and continue to discuss the future of Russia in terms of this cultural-historical division. Being translated into foreign policy actions, this contradiction brought to life different schools in foreign policy. The main two are the 'Westernizers', who call for close cooperation with the West in the international arena, and their adversaries from the 'Eurasian' camp who stand for the creation of the anti-Western block in world politics. The first decade of post-communist Russia was characterized by the cyclical change of foreign policy orientations-from a 'pro-Western' to an 'anti-Western' course. As this article will demonstrate, during Putin's tenures Russian foreign policy has experienced similar fluctuations. The mechanisms of these cyclical changes and the current stage of Moscow's foreign policy, which is characterized by a further shift in the 'anti-Western' and 'pro-Eastern' directions, will be in the focus of this analysis.