This article examines the emergence in official Russian political discourse of a conceptual framework centered on the notion of a plurality of coexisting civilizations, each distinguished by certain inherent cultural values. The article champions the view that the rise of this framework to the status of official foreign policy in 2008 can be seen as a crucial step in an increasing “symbolic sovereignization” of Russia driven forward by the Russian government. While Russia's own civilizational identity during the period in question was initially defined as European, the Russian government eventually offered a contending model based on the notion of a self‐contained and unique Russian civilization. In the concluding remarks, it is suggested that this development represents a major conceptual turn, the wider political implications of which have become apparent during the still ongoing Ukrainian crisis.
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Fabian Linde (2016) studied this question.