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Russia: A Part of the West or Apart from the West?

2010; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 24; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0047117810377372

1741-2862

Sebastian Kaempf,

Russia and Soviet political economy

Outlining the century-old debates about ‘What is Russia?’, this article — by drawing on a variety of sources such as fiction, culture, cartoons and identity — shows how Russian and Western answers to this question have impacted on each other. To do so, the article first examines the extent to which Russian society — ever since the Mongolian Yoke — has been culturally torn between Westerniser and anti-Westerniser positions. It then complements the insights into Russia’s self-reflective identity formation in two ways: by illustrating how Russia, in the West, has become portrayed as a caricature of the Western consciousness and by demonstrating how the Russian ‘Self’, in return, has been defined through the prism of Western expectations.