Chasing Greatness: On Russia's Discursive Interaction with the West over the Past Millennium
Chasing Greatness: On Russia's Discursive Interaction with the West over the Past Millennium
by Anatoly Reshetnikov
University of Michigan Press, 2024
ISBNs
Cloth: 978-0-472-07669-7
Paper: 978-0-472-05669-9
eISBN: 978-0-472-90438-9 (OA)
About the Book
Over the last two decades, it has become clear that Russia insists on its great power status, even at considerable cost. Chasing Greatness provides an interpretive explanation of the tacit rules that shape Russia's great power identity today. Anatoly Reshetnikov argues that this never-ending chase for greatness is a result of how Russia and its predecessors—including the USSR, Russian Empire, Muscovy, and Kievan Rus’—historically interacted with its neighbors to the east, the south, and particularly the west. By analyzing an extensive amount of original source material, including primary sources that have not been previously translated into English, he is able to reconstruct a millennial history of the Russian concepts that express political greatness. He also traces numerous encounters between Russia and the West, as well as Russia’s troubled integration into the European society of states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to show how these concepts have affected Russia’s interaction with international society.
Despite its substantive historical depth, Chasing Greatness is not a book of history. Rather, it is a synthesizing social science work inspired by the continental tradition of the critical history of modernity. As such, the book is more about the present than about the past. Its main aim is to expose and explain the rich conceptual baggage behind Russia’s unceasing great power rhetoric (domestic and international) and how this rhetoric drives the current international crises involving Russia.
Despite its substantive historical depth, Chasing Greatness is not a book of history. Rather, it is a synthesizing social science work inspired by the continental tradition of the critical history of modernity. As such, the book is more about the present than about the past. Its main aim is to expose and explain the rich conceptual baggage behind Russia’s unceasing great power rhetoric (domestic and international) and how this rhetoric drives the current international crises involving Russia.
About the Author
Anatoly Reshetnikov is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Webster University.
Reviews
"[Chasing Greatness] achieves a methodologically important result. The reconstruction of concepts carried out by Reshetnikov helps [refine] conceptual frameworks and qualifying nuances that set not entirely synonymous political concepts apart. In addition, the book advances a better understanding of the variations within Russia's great power discourse identifying different genealogical modes within its historical evolution."— Political Science (Politicheskaya nauka)
“Russia’s claimed great-power status has become a prison of their own making. Essential reading, Chasing Greatness tells how and why.”— Iver B. Neumann, author of The Steppe Tradition in International Relations
"[Chasing Greatness] brings together a collection of historiographic works, correspondence, literature, speeches and many other original texts, which makes the book unique. It is full of exciting quotes that help readers grasp the mindset of the contemporaries and their interpretations of reality that they wanted to shape."— Honorata Mazepus, International Affairs
"Reshetnikov effectively explains the nature of Russia's historical discursive entrapment in its greatness by engaging with Russian historical sources and intellectual traditions...Reshetnikov's work provides historical material in constant dialogue with modern affairs which creates multiple thought-provoking analogies with the contemporary Russian rally for international recognition." — Sergei Akopov, The Middle Ground Journal
“Chasing Greatness offers an insider perspective on Russia and explores how a concept everyone takes for granted such as ‘great power’ has a different history in that setting. Written by one of the best rising scholars of Russia, this book greatly advances our understanding of Russia and Russian foreign policy.”— Ayse Zarakol, University of Cambridge
Tags
Configurations: Critical Studies Of World Politics, Foreign relations, International Relations, Political Ideologies, World, Political Science
Open Access Information
License: CC BY-NC
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