Sovereignty and democracy in contemporary Russia: a modern subject faces the post-modern world

Abstract

The slogan of ‘sovereign democracy’ forms the ideological horizon of contemporary Russia. While many scholars would warn against taking the official propaganda seriously, I choose to treat it as a symptom of the discursive tensions that exist both in the Russian identity politics and, more broadly, in the global debate about the future of democracy. Using a poststructuralist perspective, I explore the origins of the restorationist turn in Russian identity politics, which is currently obsessed with comparing the new Russia with the Soviet ‘golden age’ and struggles to adapt this neo-imperial identity to the unprecedented and utterly uncertain boundaries of the emerging political community. At the global level, the Kremlin attempts to redefine democracy as a truly universal value to be emancipated from western hegemonic control. I contend that, despite it being used to justify the most undemocratic practices at home, this criticism constitutes an extremely interesting departure with a great liberating potential. It indicates a significant degree of dislocation existing in both the Russian domestic and global hegemonic structures. Dislocation can provoke securitizing practices that lead back to a structural closure, but it can also provide foundations for emancipatory politics, if and when there is a subject willing to liberate itself.