ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the Russian border policy and border-related threat images or perceptions from two main perspectives: the development of Russia–European Union relations; and the historical legacies of state building in multinational and national contexts. The principal argument is that in addition to the external changes of international relations differences in internal state building shape international actorness and the related conceptualisations of state borders. Borders are therefore not taken as self-evident, but as consequences of social and political processes. How borders are perceived is a reflection of historical patterns of the conceptualisation and representation of space and territory. Post-Soviet Russian border control is initially analysed based on the Border Regulations of 1993 and the Border Policy document of 1996. The relationship between the definition of internal and external threats is an especially interesting one in the early Russian border policies.
