Russia’s exceptional mission in the Slavic World: a relic of the past or a present-day phenomenon?

The article seeks to answer a question whether messianic motives are still present in the foreign policy of the Russian Federation. I define mission as a conviction that a certain community (state/nation) is exceptional and that this exceptionality manifests itself in its special destiny. I discern three distinctive, but interconnected features of “mission”: (1) the conviction of having a sp ecial destiny, (2) a sense of moral superiority, (3) the conviction that the state’s activity is motivated not only by its own particular interest but also by the ‘common cause’. By messianic motives I understand direct references to Russia’s mission or to one of its three components. While analysing contemporary messianic narrative the spotlight is put on Russia’s exceptional role in the Slavic world which was one of the main components of the tradition of Russian messianism in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Back than Slavic nations were considered Russia’s kin or as Andrei Tsygankov puts it - “cultural allies”. A “cultural ally” is a group whose protection Russia understood in a given historical period as the moral goal of its foreign policy. Hence determining “cultural allies” depended each time on Russia’s selfidentification process. For instance Russia defined as “orthodox civilisation” was destined to save adherends of Eastern Orthodox Church. As for the method, together with my research team I conducted content analysis of the documents representative for the official discourse, i.e. discourse produced by the state institutions. We have read public statements, articles, interviews etc. delivered by the creator of the Russian foreign policy, i.e. by the president, prime minister, minister of foreign affairs, ministry of national defence as well as regular diplomats and permanent representatives of Russia in the selected international organisations. All in all, we have read 25 000 texts. The analysis of the empirical material allows to conclude that the mission narrative is not a dominant one of the official foreign policy discourse but rather it lingers on its margins. It has grown into a peculiar narrative habit shaped in the times of the Russian Empire. Within this narrative references to Russia’s exception role in the Slavic world are rare. In the beginning of the 21^st century it’s Slavic nations and not even russkiy mir but adherents of Orthodoxy or simply Christians who appear in today’s discourse as Russia’s “cultural allies”.

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