Biopower and geopolitics as Russia’s neighborhood strategies: reconnecting people or reaggregating lands?

Abstract

© 2017 Association for the Study of Nationalities.In this article, we address geopolitics and biopower as two different yet mutually correlative discursive strategies of sovereign power in Russia. We challenge the dominant realist approaches to Russia’s neighborhood policy by introducing the concept of biopolitics as its key element, which makes analysis of political relations in the post-Soviet area more nuanced and variegated. More specifically, we address an important distinction between geopolitical control over territories and management of population as two of Russia’s strategies in its “near abroad.”