ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the role of identity in the making of foreign policy. It contributes a variegated and vivid picture of the power of ideas and identities as well as the main vehicles for these factors, memory and history, on human collectives and their consequent interaction. In the context of Baltic-Russian relations the most glaring and recent event that has portrayed these same negative dynamics was of course the intense political crisis over the relocation of the Bronze Soldier monument. The Baltic-Russian encounters take place within the wider Western matrix of meanings and when they themselves fail to take this fact into account in their actions and at times rather hegemonic Western understandings concerning the issues at stake. It also seems evident that Russia was in fact aware of this fact and was trying to use this to her own advantage to dilute the essential European/wider Western solidarity and to isolate Estonia from its partners.
