Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin: Honor in international relations, by Andrei P Tsygankov

Abstract

Andrei P Tsygankov Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin: Honor in international relations Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. xii + 3l7pp., $107.95 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-1070-2552-3Since the Soviet Union's collapse there has been much disagreement among scholars about Russian foreign policy. Russia is often labelled as non-cooperative or irrational in relations with the West, even as anti-Western. How can we explain and understand Russia's behaviour toward the West? Using a social-constructivist approach, Andrei Tsygankov, a professor at San Francisco State University and author of a number of works on Russia's international relations, proposes a novel interpretation of Russian foreign policy: the concept of honour best explains Russia's actions toward the West over the past 200 years.Tsygankov's study is organized into four parts. In Part I, the most important section of the book from a theoretical perspective, the author presents an explicitly developed theory of Russian-Western relations. Europe and the West, Tsygankov argues, created the meaningful environment in which Russia's rulers defended their visions of national honor and interests (51). The Russian myth of honour, rooted in Eastern Christianity, is a distinctive concept of spiritual freedom and the ideal of a strong and socially protective state (28). These aspects of the Russian myth of honour have operated differently across history. During the Tsarist period, the Russian conception of honour was embedded in Orthodox Christianity, autocracy, and support for Orthodox and Slavic peoples abroad. With the establishment of the Bolshevik regime, communist ideology took the place of religion; the autocratic state and support for the Orthodox and Slavic peoples abroad were replaced respectively by Communist Party rule and by a commitment to Communist regimes. Post-Soviet Russia, the author contends, is in the process of defining a new ideological framework, one that includes Russian civilization, a strong state, and support for Russian and pro-Russian communities (34). Tsygankov advances three distinct patterns of Russian behaviour toward the West based on the idea of honour: cooperation, defensive reaction, and assertiveness. In each case, policy choice is influenced by a combination of Western recognition (or nonrecognition) of Russian interests, honour, and perceived domestic strength.In the subsequent three parts of the book, the author tests his theoretical framework by applying the concept of honour to 10 historical case studies of Russian-Western interaction. Tsygankov groups the case studies thematically around his three distinct patterns of behaviour-cooperation, defensiveness, and assertiveness-and each is compared to realist explanations. In Part II, which comprises four case studies of Russia's cooperation with the West (the Holy Alliance, 1815-1853; the Triple Entente, 1907-1917; collective security, 1933-1939; and the War on Terror, 2001-2005), Tsygankov observes how Western states accepted Russian interests, and Russia in turn, guided by its honour-based commitment, collaborated with them. Part III examines cases where the West did not accept Russian interests, and Russia, again bound by a sense of honour, turned to a defensive foreign policy (the Recueillement, 1856-1871; peaceful coexistence, 1921-1939; containing NATO expansion, 1995-2000). …