Alicja Curanović - The Sense of Mission in Russian Foreign Policy

Alicja Curanovi

The first time I had the idea to look more closely at contemporary Russian messianism was around 2010, long before the annexation of Crimea which prompted many publishers to announce that Russias mission in its imperial version had been reactivated. The annexation of Crimea occurred when I personally was searching for a way to link messianism to foreign policy. The collection of materials, working out a methodology and consultations took many years. I am certain that I would not have been able to complete this project without the support and valuable advice of many people and institutions. I am grateful to the Kosciuszko Foundation and the EU Erasmus Mundus Aurora programme for a years research (September 2013October 2014), firstly at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, then at the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University, and finally at Moscows Russian State University for the Humanities. The three-year grant (2015/19/D/HS5/03149) I received in 2015 from the National Science Centre (Poland) enabled the creation of a team and the internationalising of the research. The Senior Award granted by the Polish-American Fulbright Commission led me to the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University (2018). In all of these places I benefited from the extraordinarily valuable advice and suggestions from world-class Russia experts. In particular I wish to thank my supervisors: David Holloway (Stanford), Olga Pavlenko (RGGU) and Timothy Colton (Davis Center). I am also grateful to researchers from the Center for Comparative History and Political Studies (Perm State National Research University), the Center for Russian and East European Studies from the University of Pittsburgh and the Russian and East European Studies Department and the Foreign Policy Research Institute from the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn, Philadelphia) for consultations. I also wish to thank Lucian Leustean and Chris Marsh for their support. I am grateful to the leadership of the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Warsaw, which I hail from, in particular the invaluable Ania Balcerzak, Magosia Fryziak and Kasia Maecka. Were it not for their assistance I would certainly have perished in an administrative-financial quagmire. I want to thank all my colleagues from the Institute of International Relations for their kindness. Ania and Szymon, without you it would have been uphill all the way! Enormous thanks are due also to my team of fantastic young academics: Katarzyna Biersztaska, Piotr Szymaski, Irmina Oowska-Szymaska and Grzegorz Szymanowski. I learned so much from you and without your help I would have lost it. Kasia, Piotr, Irmina, Grzesiek dont forget, the volcano keeps roaring!

And finally, I express my gratitude to those who had to endure the most, the most patient and always supportive, truly angelic! The last word is addressed to Miha: e en lanek!

An abundance, a multitude, its enough to make your head spin. When people writing about Russia make even a short visit to an academic bookstore they must ask themselves, Whats the point? When they cast their gaze on the sizeable number of recently published books on Russian politics, there will be that nagging doubt as to whether there is any virgin territory still remaining which is worth investigating and presenting to a wider circle of readers. And why would anyone write yet another book about Russia? My personal answer is that I have written this book to address questions which had not yet been answered. It would thus be fair to label my motivation as selfishly driven by my own curiosity.