ABSTRACT
Nationalism, identity and identity politics have traditionally not been the major focus of transformation theory. Instead, on the strictly theoretical level, the focus was more on hard, positivist factors, such as institutional setup, prior regime type, mode of transition, economic development (Müller and Pickel 2007: 76). There also was a special emphasis on the role of political elites, and on the (expected) development of civil society. In the strand of transformation literature which finally picked up the issue of national identity, it became a commonplace assertion that after 1990, Russia underwent a severe identity crisis. However, because of the aforementioned gaps in theory, many accounts in (Western) social science either fail to provide detailed evidence for this claim and/or fall short of embedding their assertion into a theoretical framework. On the other hand, international relations (IR) theory has been much more inclined than transformation theory to translate the cultural turn into their theories, adopting constructivist and sometimes poststructuralist per spectives (Connolly 1991; Edkins 1999; Hansen 2006; Chernoff 2007: 153ff.). The poststructuralists’ basic claim is that it is not possible to step outside the world and impartially observe reality as it takes place “out there”. Actually, there is no “reality” out there – what can rather be observed are networks of (verbal and non verbal) interactions (i.e. discourses) that construct diff erent realities. Similarly, identities are seen as constructs and IR theory has also been accordingly quick to recognize their importance for international relation formation (Kassianova 2001; Hopf 2002; Tsygankov 2006; Morozov 2009). A particularly promising theory to shed a new, theoretical sound light on Rus sia’s identity crisis is Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) theory of discourse and hegemony, which highlights the relational and antagonistic character of identi ties. It elaborates on how events like the end of the Cold War represent major discursive ruptures which trigger a reshuffling of identities. It also offers points of departure for understanding Russia’s development and new stability without being bound to the usual approach of assessing the degree of democracy.1 Intro ducing poststructuralist elements into transformation theory also means releasing it from the grip of a normative, Eurocentric transitology, since, as Richard Ashley summarizes:
The task of poststructuralist social theory is not to impose a general inter pretation, a paradigm of the sovereignty of man, as a guide to the trans formation of life on a global scale. In contrast to modern social theory [of which Transitology is a derivate, OM&PC], poststructuralism eschews grand designs, transcendental grounds or universal projects of humankind.
