| dc.description.abstract | This thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of the national interest formation in Russia’s foreign policy in the timeframe 2008-2017. It puts greater emphasis on the integrational processes in the post-Soviet region as one of the key national interests. It seeks to offer a comprehensive understanding of how the Russian elites portrayed the country’s national interests, especially in the post-Soviet space, and how their national interests’ construction corresponds with the three main paradigms in the theory of international relations: realism, liberalism and constructivism. It provides the theoretical framework by summarizing key characteristics of each paradigm and describing how the national interest concept is framed within them. I argue that the national interest concept, understood as a social construction, can be applied to analyse how the political elites construct, and therefore understand, political objectives. Using critical discourse analysis, it analyses the major strategic foreign policy documents along with the supplementary speeches and statements of the Russian President, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. The research design takes the form of an interpretative single case study. The discourse analysis concludes that The Kremlin has redefined the country’s national interests after the Ukrainian crisis, which indicated an imperative change in Russian foreign policy. Official Russian foreign policy discourse is not solely based on the realist premises. It represents an interdiscursive mix, where the neorealist understanding of the competing nature of IR dominates. Discourse on regional integration is constructed mostly in the liberal fashion, but incorporates civilizational components and elements of power politics that prescribe the threats to Russia’s national interests as primarily originating in the “West”. | eng |