Provincializing Russia: recontextualizing postcolonial thought in the post-Soviet era

Since 2008, a growing divergence between Russia's self-perception and its portrayal in neighbouring states has sparked debates among scholars regarding the underlying motives driving Russian expansionism. Despite the conventional view of Russia as a "great power", its colonial tendencies have been largely overlooked, with postcolonial perspectives rarely applied to analyze its foreign policy. However, the 2022 conflict with Ukraine marked a pivotal moment in Eurasian studies, prompting a re-evaluation of Russia's colonial posture. This catalyzed a postcolonial shift, fostering dialogue between postsocialist and postcolonial scholarship. This essay provides an overview of Russian post/neo-colonial studies, tracing the evolution of perspectives and the resurgence of postcolonial studies of Russia. It examines the historical development of the postcolonial paradigm in the post-Soviet context and explores the application of postcolonial frameworks to analyze Russian foreign policy in the post-2022 era.