ABSTRACT
Russia’s traditionally ambivalent relationship to ‘Europe’ is now assuming new forms. Although the country since 1991 has formally adopted the panoply of Western democratic norms, their implementation is impeded by both practical and political forms of resistance to the universalism proclaimed by its erstwhile Cold War protagonists. The unstable relationship between Russia and various levels of international society has given rise to a type of ‘cold peace’. Russia does not reject the norms advanced by the main institutions of European international society, but it objects to what it sees as their instrumental application. Thus Russia has emerged as a neo-revisionist power, concerned not so much with advancing a set of alternative norms as ensuring the equal application of existing principles. Russia certainly does not repudiate engagement with international society, but at present is ready only for a relatively thin version. In this context Russia balks at being a passive norm-taker but does not present itself as a norm-innovator, and instead is trying to carve out a new role for itself as a norm-enforcer.
