This presentation will use as the point of departure of the concept of subaltern imperialism, developed in his recent book (Russia's Postcolonial Identity: A Subaltern Empire in a Eurocentric World, Palgrave 2015). The value of this approach consists in highlighting the fact that Russia, in spite of its great power identity and imperial ambition, has never been able to overcome economic and normative dependency on the West.His key argument is that the national agenda in all recent Russian political transformations has been displaced by the question of how to relate to the West, which results in a vicious circle of repeated attempts at catch-up modernization followed by anti-Western reaction.
Viacheslav Morozov is Professor of EU-Russia Studies at the University of Tartu and Chairman of the Council of the UT Centre for EU-Russia Studies. Before moving to Tartu in 2010, he taught for 13 years at his alma mater, the St. Petersburg State University, Russia.
