Imperial Sentiment, Subaltern Rhetoric: Russia on the Scale of Imperial/Colonial Difference

Abstract

The article discusses a hybrid positionality of Russia on the scale of imperial/colonial difference where Eastern European subjects compensate for the resentment that arises from their peripheral standing by subjugating weaker neighbors striving to acquire recognition from the hegemon and improve their status in the existing cultural hierarchies. Having interiorized the logic of catching-up development, imposed on Europe’s East, Russia has transitioned from a peripheral empire (catching-up imperialism mimicking the hegemon) to a global disruptor (questioning the supremacy of the hegemon and modifying the matrix of differentiation). Seeking to improve Russia’s geopolitical standing and secure its power grip at home, the Kremlin leadership simultaneously evokes imperial and subaltern sentiments through the tropes of humiliation and unrecognized greatness, which are linked in Russian messianism. By framing the stakes of the war as normative and global, it garners support in the so-called Global South around shared grievances and the figure of a common enemy. This normative geopolitical bid manifests a hegemonic struggle played out in an identitarian way.