Russia’s Constitutional Amendments of 2020 Read through the Post-Colonial Lens : Do the Amendments Pave the Way for Russia to Become a Colonial Power Again?

The 2020 amendments of the Russian Constitution have triggered an extensive academic discussion both within and outside Russia. The prevailing Western interpretation in the light of democratic constitutionalism states the fact of an authoritarian roll-back but cannot really explain why Russia falls back into old patterns of autocracy and isolationism. A post-colonial reading of the amendments can provide for a comprehensive explanation which does not replace, but adds to the post-authoritarian perspective. Putin‘s Russia wants to become again the imperial centre that Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union were in their time. For this purpose, the concentration of all state power in a ‘strong-man president’ serves – inter alia – the purpose of making Russia internally fit for its neo-imperial role; the redefinition of Russia’s role in the world glorifies bygone ‘greatness’ and thus paves the way for colonial ambitions; and also the negation of the binding force of international law is not just a relapse into traditional isolationism and exceptionalism but has the potential to rid Russia from international legal duties that may hamper its expansive colonial intentions. A closer post-colonial look reveals, however, that nothing of this is new: tendencies of imperialism and isolationism date back to the Yeltsin years and were intensified under Putin. By elevating these tendencies onto the constitutional level, the 2020 amendments are a quantitative, but not so much a qualitative change.