Constructing parallel worlds: comparative discourse analysis of the Union State of Russia and Belarus

Abstract

The sphere of integration in the post-Soviet space, especially between Russian and Belarus, has always been viewed and studied through the practical prism, making an emphasis on the sides’ instrumental motives. Despite several attempts (Klinke 2008; Słowikowski 2022), the discursive side of post-Soviet integration efforts remains largely under-researched, whereas European integration remains one of the most prolific areas of poststructuralist discourse analysis application to IR discipline. The study applies Laclau’s poststructuralist discourse theory with its related ontology to the case of Minsk and Moscow’s attempt to unify within the Union State in the early 2000s. The thesis delves into the ways the sides were articulating their understandings of the Union State, as well as into the final products of such discursive practices. The study finds that in the early 2000s Minsk and Moscow discursively formed completely different, and often mutually exclusive, visions of unification within the Union State along all four of its axes: political, economic, energy, and monetary. Each other’s discursive structures were viewed as a radical ‘Other,’ threatening the ‘Self’s’ identity within the (future) Union State. Neither side’s discourse did not manage to hegemonize the social sphere, and become universally valid, thus foredooming the project's chances of success. This study is important as one of the first (if not the first) attempts to apply poststructuralist discourse analysis to the sphere of post-Soviet integration, thus opening up many other possibilities in this field of study.