A glorious history of international studies in Russia

Abstract

Many people, especially in, but not limited to Europe, tend to believe that if something is good, it must have a long history. There are various implications of this assumption across social sciences and humanities. In democracy studies, for example, the assumption has produced the debate on the differences between “old” and “new” democracies, many participants of which have arrived in conclusion that old democracies are more stable, while new democracies are more fragile [1]. Representatives of far-right movements in various European countries, including in Russia and some other new independent states, who are predominantly proponents of primordial theory of nationalism [2], are engaged in debates with each other about whose nation is “older” assuming that “older” nations are also “better”, despite both the “conclusion” and the “logic” behind it seem absurd to me. Closer to international relations, in 2003 the assumption became the primary reason for many Europeans not to buy then US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s argument that “old” European countries are outdated in their refusal to support US policy in Iraq, while Europe must “renew” in the way demonstrated by “new” European countries, which predominantly supported the Iraq war [3]. Back then and today, most people in “new” European countries want their countries to become “older”, and most people in “old” European countries do not want their countries to become “younger”. Awareness of this assumption is an important prerequisite to reading of MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations University) Professor Marina Lebedeva’s “Russian Studies of IR”. Lebedeva rightly points that very few Russian scholars in the field of international studies doubt that “the Westphalian system with its ideas of sover-