The Politics of Russian Revisionism: Diplomacy of a Worldview, 2011–14

Russian Politics. 2021. Vol. 6. No. 4. P. 453–477.

Ferguson I., Akopov S.

Russia’s use of force in Ukraine has been described as a challenge to the rule of international

law and an event of unilateral intervention. This paper provides a reinterpretation

of this standard history of Russian revisionism. Our new history places this

practice in a global governance context through an analysis of the politics concerning

the international legal norm of ‘non-intervention’ and its legitimate/illegitimate

exceptions for collective intervention. This analysis discloses a practice of Russian

diplomacy that emerges out of resistance to humanitarian interventions advocated

for by Western states. This practice justifies its own state-bound humanitarian intervention

as the legitimate exception to the foundation of international order, which

Russian diplomacy had previously sought to restore. We argue the political discourse

of the worldview of ‘state civilization’ explains these events of Russian revisionism. We

conclude with an analysis of the international paradoxes of peace and conflict contingent

on this Russian worldview.

Keywords: дипломатия, global governance, политический дискурс, intervention, diplomacy, ревизионизм, интервенция, revisionism, political discourse