A Modern Empire and Its Public Diplomacy: On Russia’s Communication With Estonia

Abstract

Defining the Russian Federation as one of the four contemporary empires (Zielonka 2012), this article links the imperial paradigm (Parker 2010; Zielonka 2012, 2013, 2015; Colomer 2017), social constructs building (Wendt 1992), strategic narrative theory (Miskimmon et al. 2013), and soft power-associated public diplomacy instrumentarium (Melissen 2005; Nye 2008; Cull 2008, 2009; Cowan and Arsenault 2008) into a single conceptual framework to examine public diplomacy by the Russian Federation towards the Republic of Estonia. This analysis assumes that Russia understands Estonia as its own periphery in imperial terms. However, since Estonia already is an integral part of yet another modern empire (the European Union), our article notifies that Russia is left with a limited range of effective mechanisms of strategic communication with its Baltic neighbours, and Estonia in particular. Respectively, we test the following claim: in order to effectively project its strategic identity, system and policy narratives to Estonia, Russia prefers using a range of public diplomacy mechanisms rather than other types of communicational strategies. Empirically, we engage with eight annual reviews of the Estonian Internal Security Service (2012-2019/20).