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Russian foreign policy in the 1990s, though in many ways chaotic, demonstrated a general move from an initial pro-Western strategy to a more 'independent' and 'pragmatic nationalist' strategy. The main feature of this move was a much more critical stance towards the West. Yet the Russian leadership displayed very different attitudes to two major Western organisations: while fiercely critical of NATO it was neutral or positively disposed towards the ED. The thesis tries to discover why this was so by means of two explanatory frameworks. The first is an application of realist foreign policy theory. Neoclassical realism explains state foreign policy through the study of the international distribution of material power and the manner in which state elites attempt to alter this in their favour. The second framework uses constructivist insights into national culture. National identity strongly influences how policy-makers view the world and the possibilities open to them. An understanding of how the national identity debate develops helps to explain the policies they undertake. The analysis demonstrates that each of the two schemes illuminates many aspects of Russian policy-making in the 1990s and that they are complementary rather than alternative approaches. Equally they leave much unanswered, and the details of policy-making are sometimes not well explained. The suggestion is that further research into Russian foreign policy (under Putin, for example) would require a more detailed focus on bureaucratic politics and interpersonal rivalries within the elite as a complement to the kind of analysis undertaken here.

Numerous academics and foreign policy practitioners have argued that relations with Russia are one of the most divisive issues within the European Union (cf. Leonard and Popescu 2007, Mandelson 2007). Mainstream explanations highlight that this is due to the different interests and security concerns of EU member states (David et al. 2011). This dissertation proposes an alternative understanding that focuses on national identity construction and Russia‘s role therein. Germany, Poland and Finland, three EU member states that traditionally have different stances towards Russia, are selected for in-depth analysis. The key argument is that divergent national discourses on Russia are due to the different ways in which the country was constructed in national identity. In order to show this, the thesis elaborates on social constructivist scholarship studying the relationship between identity and foreign policy. It argues that constructivist models theorising a causal link between identity and foreign policy (eg Wendt 1999, Katzenstein 1996) are insufficient to fully explain the complexity of this relationship. Drawing on the work of scholars such as Ted Hopf (2002), Richard Ned Lebow (2008, 2008a) and Ole Waever (2002), this thesis develops an interpretive theoretical framework in which national identity and foreign policy are conceptualised as mutually constitutive and studied at the level of discourses. Dominant identity and foreign policy narratives are examined in a longue durée perspective, which allows for an exploration of their deep historical roots. The research conducted through this model highlights the relevance of long-standing narratives on Russia to current foreign policy discourses. However, the thesis also shows that national identity is malleable and top national officials can reformulate dominant discourses in order to achieve particular foreign policy goals. This is illustrated in the case studies, which focus on official narratives concerning the building of the Nord Stream pipeline, the Russian-Georgian war of August 2008 and the mass demonstrations in Russian cities in the winter of 2011-2012. The empirical analysis shows that gradual convergence took place across national discourses as national constructions of Russia were reformulated in order to pursue a pragmatic foreign policy towards Moscow. Finally, through the comparison of national discourses in the EU discursive arena, the dissertation assesses the prospects for the emergence of shared EU foreign policy narratives on Russia.

As the largest external supplier of natural gas to the EU with reserves sufficient for another 74 years at current production levels, Russia is a strategic energy partner for the EU, and will remain so in the coming decades. The first eight years of the 21st century brought a dramatic rise in European oil and gas prices, and the idea of Russia as an ‘energy superpower’. However, such a characterisation of Russia failed to account for the interdependent nature of the Russia-EU gas relationship, and reflected a lack of nuanced Western understandings of the relationship between political and commercial entities in Russia’s energy sector. This thesis contributes to the gap in the literature by employing a social constructivist approach to the examination of Russian state and Gazprom conceptions of natural gas as a strategic resource and Russia’s gas exports to the EU. The crux of this research is the analysis of the convergence and divergence of Gazprom and Russian state interests and strategies, on the basis of their conceptualisations of natural gas as a strategic commodity. These interests are then played out in the relationship between Gazprom and the Russian state: where Gazprom and Russian state interests diverge, the degree to which the Russian state is able to impose its interests on Gazprom is highly significant. The extent to which Russia’s political leadership conceptualises gas as a political, rather than purely economic, resource not only influences Russian state interests, but also the degree to which those state interests converge with the commercial interests of Gazprom. The identification of Gazprom and Russian state conceptions of, and interests in relation to, natural gas therefore offers the possibility of rationalising Gazprom’s actions and strategies in commercial terms, where previously the presence of political interests may have led to the reductionist interpretation of those actions being little more than further evidence of Russia wielding the ‘energy weapon’. In Russia itself, the state conceptualisation of gas as a strategic national resource has led to the government using state-owned Gazprom as a vehicle for state control over Russia’s resources. In Russia’s relations with Ukraine and Belarus, natural gas is both political and economic – the Russian government views gas exports to Ukraine and Belarus as potentially lucrative, but it is willing to trade economic utility for political concessions, with Gazprom again the vehicle for such deals. It is in relation to Russia’s gas exports to the EU that the Russian state sees gas as an overwhelmingly economic resource, where prices are highest and the potential for barter or leverage is lowest. The examination of the Nord Stream gas pipeline highlights the convergence of Gazprom and state interests in strategic gas projects, and further emphasises the economic interests of the Russian state in such projects, thus demonstrating that state interests are not always completely political. Again, this challenges the interpretation of the fusion of energy and foreign policy as evidence of the ‘energy weapon’, and offers the possibility of rationalising Gazprom’s policies. Such a rationalisation increases our ability to understand the dynamics of Russia’s gas exports, which in turn offers the possibility of more constructive cooperation between supplier and consumer. The Medvedev presidency of 2008-2012 is particularly noteworthy, because it was marked by dramatic fluctuations of European gas prices, which exposed Russia’s economic vulnerability to commodity price shifts. At the same time, the EU gas market underwent a significant development in terms of increased supply-side competition, increased spot trading, and regulatory development (particularly the Third Energy Package), which rendered that market an increasingly competitive environment for Gazprom. The extent to which Gazprom is able to adapt to these developments, and the extent to which the Russian state will be willing to continue supporting Gazprom if it does not, will be significant factors in Russia’s future role as a strategic gas supplier to the EU.

In recent years the EU’s strategy towards promoting human rights in Russia has been the focus of considerable internal and external attention, much of it critical. Despite longstanding programmes for funding human rights projects in Russia and the launch of biannual EU-Russia human rights consultations in 2005, the subject of human rights remains contentious within EU-Russia relations. One striking aspect of the EU’s policy towards Russia is its focus on issues such as prison reform, freedom of speech and prevention of torture which can broadly be characterized as civil and political rights issues. The purpose of this thesis is to explore an area of human rights theory and practice which tends to receive far less attention, namely economic and social rights issues such as the right to housing, health, access to social security and workers’ rights. Utilising data gathered from interviews with EU and Member State officials and Russian NGOs and a discourse analysis of EU policy documents on human rights, the thesis examines how EU institutions, Member States and Russian civil society actors conceptualise the meaning and significance of economic and social rights in both a general and specifically Russian context. The study situates these understandings of economic and social rights and the State’s role in guaranteeing them in Russia in the historical context of the Soviet legacy of emphasizing such rights over civil and political rights. It also highlights enduring public expectations of what the State should provide and the policy of the various presidential administrations since 2005 of reasserting the State’s role in relation to the apparent realisation of economic and social rights through social service provision. It explores the differing approaches taken by human rights and more socially-oriented NGOs to engagement with various State structures and State-affiliated structures such as the regional human rights ombudsmen, and the privileged position Russian human rights NGOs appear to enjoy in terms of their relationship with the EU. The thesis argues that the EU’s closeness to this very specific type of civil society organisation and its apparent lack of internal and external consensus on the importance of economic and social rights issues hinders its ability to raise issues relating to these rights in its interactions with Russia. At the same time, the fact that economic and social rights continue to enjoy a relatively high degree of visibility and importance in Russia make cooperation on economic and social rights issues an area where more fruitful engagement on human rights could take place between the EU and Russia.