Russian Strategic Culture in Retrospect

Abstract

The article analyzes the transformation of Russian strategic culture over the past 100 years. During this period, Russia veered away from the strategic goal-setting practices that its elite had implemented previously. Since the end of the 18th century, Russia was an integral part of the Concert of Europe, and its ruling circles absorbed the European ideas of peace, language of diplomacy, and approaches to military planning. Soviet power essentially “reinvented” the strategic culture of the Russian state, adopting The Second World War imbued Soviet strategic culture with a great-power attitude. The crisis of Soviet ideology seriously affected the strategic thinking of the elites, provoking its decline. The article concludes that some key categories of Soviet strategic culture still affect the strategic culture of modern Russian elites.