“Great Projects” Politics in Russia History’s Hardly Victorious End

The article addresses the problem of political identity in contemporary Russia by engaging with and extending the temporal scope of the constructivist analysis conducted by constructivist Ted Hopf. It suggests that the “great projects” politics of contemporary Russia, which are linked to the specificity of the country’s political identity and seem to be similar to that of the late-Soviet period, can in fact be better understood when Hopf’s approach is complemented by the post-structuralist analysis of Sergei Prozorov. The former, while providing a valuable theoretical framework and linking the state’s identity to its status as a great power, cannot account for the digression that is revealed in the discourse analysis of contemporary “great projects” politics. The latter, while being able to interpret these oddities, is limited within the domestic realm and fails to address the idea of great power, which Hopf believes to be an integral part of Russian political discourse and which is possible to interpret, only if the analysis extends beyond national borders. The article incorporates Prozorov’s theoretical contribution into the framework of Hopf, thus merging the two approaches and making them applicable to the contemporary Russian condition, both domestically and within the field of international relations.