The President as a Perception-setting agent: Presidential Rhetoric, the Russian State and Identity, and the Search for Political Legitimacy in Post-Soviet Russia.

Abstract

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 the state that has emerged, the Russian Federation, has been engulfed in a search for a legitimate and valuable identity and role for the state. This search was given new life in 2000, with the ascendency of Vladimir Putin to the Presidency, and a new Russia attempted to rise from the decay and instability of the 1990's. The Presidential perceptions of the Russian state and identity, under Putin and his successor Dmitri Medvedev, have represented a concerted and largely continuous attempt at crafting a Russian idea that both projects an image of the Russian state and identity, and simultaneously confers legitimacy to state structure. Through a discourse analysis of the President's Annual Address to the Federal Assembly, from 2000 to 2011, this perception of state and identity can be illuminated. The use of narratives, symbols, myths and cultural memory to create this continuous image of Russia and craft Presidential legitimacy from this narrative, constitutes the main concern of this thesis. The research aims to analyse the Presidential perceptions of state and identity, asking two core questions: how has the Presidency attempted to shape the Russian state and identity through their rhetoric? and Why? Analysing the specific narratives used, the attempts at narrating an idea of Russia that provides continuity with periods of past state legitimacy and the attempt at legitimating both Presidential power and the new state (the Russian Federation), this article provides an invaluable understanding of the President's attempts at shaping and legitimising the new Russia.