ABSTRACT
In the study of post-Cold War international relations, there is a strong tendency to analyse the building of the actorness of the EU and the Russian Federation as binary antithetical projects. Often, this juxtaposition converts to a source of essentialist readings of their roles. The EU is examined as a new kind of international actor that represents novel conceptions of sovereignty, borders, and territoriality, whereas Russia is considered as an archetype of a traditional international actor that builds its policies on securitised notions of territorial integrity, spheres of interest, and buffer zones. This study sketches an alternative perspective to binary essentialising research designs by applying the concept of actorness for understanding the formation of the roles of the EU and the Russia both as an internal process and in the broader context of changing international order. It goes beyond stereotypic readings by studying conceptual shifts in policies concerning borders in post-Soviet space, and screens the specific starting points that the EU and the Russia had for building their international roles after the end of the Cold War. In our conclusions, shifts in policies concerning post-Soviet borders are interpreted in the broader context of strategies concerning post-Cold War international order.
