ABSTRACT
Foreign policy plays an especially important role in the state-building process, as successes in foreign policy should legitimate Russia's great power status in the eyes of both its citizens and the outside world. From the state-building perspective, the Russian state's choice to use coercion in foreign policy may seem optimal. In authoritarian regimes the outcome of the state-building process will be, to a large extent, determined by initial state capacity, which will influence the choice of state-building strategy. During his first year in presidential office Putin repeatedly declared that building the Russian state was crucially important for Russia and therefore this task was his highest priority. In order to build 'his' state Putin had first to deal with Yeltsin's legacy, then to accumulate resources, and from this springboard go on to build the 'great Russian state' by combining objective prerequisites with the appropriate form of governance, while constantly showing the world its ever-growing might.
