Imagining the Pacific and the Russian Far East

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores central and regional constructions of Eurasia and the Russian Far East in Russian national identity as a frontier territory that forms a nexus with the Chinese, Japanese, and American Others along the Pacific littoral. Russia’s Far East and Siberia have been an integral part of Russian identity. These remote regions give Moscow claim to great power status on the Eurasian continent, but Russia’s Far East and East Asia are geographically and conceptually distant from the European center of Russia. Russia’s east is imagined as a frontier territory, with great wealth and potential, yet sparsely populated and vulnerable. As relations with Europe deteriorated in the 2010s and 2020s, new versions of Eurasianism emerged to assert a unique role for Russia as an exceptional country, as a bridge between Europe and Asia. The Putin administration has promoted the idea of Russia as central to Greater Eurasia, not only in geopolitical and geoeconomic terms, but also through a civilizational prism that reflects attitudes developed over decades.