Global Russians: In Search of Lost Time

Abstract

The thirty years of joint efforts to build an effective dialogue between the Russian government and the Russian diaspora abroad have produced controversial results. The Russian diaspora has remained one of the most divided and disunited in the world. Its potential as a lobbyist and broker has gradually shrunk to zero, while no system capable of protecting the rights of compatriots has been built by Moscow to this day. Recent years have seen still greater fragmentation and polarization of Russians living abroad, triggered by the Kremlin’s foreign policy actions in 2014. There has developed a confrontation between those who associate themselves with their compatriots and the Russian world, on the one hand, and Global Russians, on the other hand. The latter were rejected by the Russian authorities and some experts, who equated Global Russians with cosmopolitans. A review of the existing studies and empirical examples shows that this interpretation was erroneous and Global Russians were artificially opposed to other parts of the Russian diaspora and the international Russophile community (compatriots and the Russian world) as the Kremlin revised its strategy towards the Russian diaspora.