SOFT AND HARD POWER, OR RUSSIA'S PROBLEMATIC INTEGRATION INTO A MULTIPOLAR AND NEO-LIBERAL WORLD

This paper is about recent Russian foreign policy and the emergence of "soft power" policies in Vladimir Putin's hegemonic project at home and abroad. Though Putin's "iron fist" is well felt at the domestic level and in his near abroad, "soft power" has nonetheless become an indispensable ideological attribute of any regime developing its own domestic and foreign policy aims. After the Cold War and the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, the Russian government was confronted with several challenges related to the construction of not only its own national identity, but also its attitudes and behaviour with regard to the countries of the former Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc. Combining elements of soft and hard power while integrating into a process of international cooperation with the West and the emerging economies in Asia and Latin America (the BRICS) constituted a real challenge to the Kremlin in a time the Russian economy had to adapt to new realities derived from a globalizing world economy. Russia becoming a major exporter of natural gas and oil made of both assets a backbone of its foreign economic policy on which it constructed a good part of its diplomacy and its cultural relations with the countries of the near abroad and Western Europe.