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On 18 March 2018, Vladimir Putin was predictably elected to become the Russian president for the fourth time. Immediately after, a throng of political foretellers hastened to speak their minds on the fate of Russia’s domestic regime and the country’s prospective position in the international system. The range of given predictions, however, was utterly unspectacular. Almost every observer repeated, nearly word for word, one and the same set of ideas. Internationally, Russia’s conflict with the West will intensify and the Cold War rhetoric will replace the language of cooperation (Troianovski and Bodner, 2018; Zygar, 2018; DW, 2018). At home, the regime will continue slowly stagnating and will be combating dissatisfaction and dissent by intensifying repressions (Kolesnikov, 2018; Wood, 2018; Snyder, 2018; Blank, 2018). What is more, as most experts assure, Russia will continue “to pursue ‘Great Power’ambitions”(Wood, 2018; cf. Zygar, 2018). Interestingly, Russia is expected to do so despite economic challenges and rapidly deteriorating international recognition, as if prosperity and international respect had nothing to do with “greatpowerhood”, as we know it today.

Both recently and historically, Russia has indeed been talking a lot about being a Great Power. Yet, no one asked Russia, what it actually meant by saying this. It was always presumed that by “greatpowerhood” Russia meant what it means elsewhere. Russia’s appeals to greatness have always been assumed to be self-evident and were automatically embedded into the dominant Western frame of reference. Of course, there is no agreement on a universal set of criteria for …