| After almost 10 years of reestablishing of both internal and external systems of a newly created state, Russia stepped on a path of an active involvement into the international arena. Being a part of both the East and the West at the same time requires wise policy and careful choice of diplomatic tools which are used for its conduction. This thesis examines one of such tools – the cross-cultural years, a new strategy of Russian public diplomacy, which was introduced in the beginning of 2000 s as a basis for tightening of political cooperation between states. This strategy implies an arrangement of two sequential years devoted to a certain country. Usually the whole year is also devoted to a certain topic, and as the tendency shows, first of them were conducted in a cultural direction.This thesis is based on the examination of cross-cultural years conducted by Russia with Germany and with China. This choice is explained by the frequency of already held cross-cultural years. Since the introduction of the strategy in 2003 with most of other states were conducted just one cross-cultural year each. But there are only two cases where cross-cultural years were conducted three times- with China and Germany. All three times events were held in the same spheres and supported similar topics. Ideas of scientists on this topic are not similar because it is still not clear what motivates Russia on repeating this event with these two states more often than with the others. This thesis sets a number of questions which are supposed to help the research in finding the conclusion – why Russia implemented the strategy of cross-cultural years in its foreign policy towards China and Germany.The object of the thesis is the foreign policy of Russia.The subject of the thesis is the strategy of cross-cultural years implemented by Russia towards China and Germany.The main purpose of the thesis is to provide objective overview of Russian foreign policy and analyze results of conducted cross-cultural years in case of bilateral relations with China and Germany.The main aim of the thesis is to analyze the necessity of implementation of cross-cultural years` strategy in Russian foreign policy. In case if Russia already started to use this strategy mostly towards these two states, then there should be valuable reasons for making preferences in newly introduced strategy.The structure of current research includes three chapters and conclusion.The first chapter is the introduction and the overview of the conducted research. It consists of seven paragraphs. They provide general information about the aim of the thesis, the research methodology and the theoretical framework used in the research, and also give the general outline on the chosen literature and sources collected for supporting the argumentation and proof of hypothesis.General information of each paragraph:The first paragraph sets the main question and three additional questions aimed on clarifying key points of the main question.The second paragraph describes theoretical framework used in the research: 1) public diplomacy, where Joseph Nye stated that it is “an instrument that governments use to mobilize resources to communicate with and attract the publics of other countries, rather then merely their governments” so “that is why exchanges are often more effective than mere broadcasting”; 2) the Organization Process Model which was introduced by Graham Allison in his work “Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis”. One of the main points of this work is that the governmental behavior can be mostly described as outputs of a number of organizations, involving cooperated work of large number of workers, whose work is coordinated by SOPs – standard operating procedures.The third paragraph explains the methodology used in the research: 1) the process tracing is a method which focuses on examination of causation process existing in the case studies. The main attention is paid to the creation of a causation mechanism between an independent variable(or variables) and the outcome of the dependent variable”; 2) the discourse analysis is a complex of methods “concerned with the production of meaning through texts”, which synonymously relating to the meaning of a “language”, not necessarily written, but also spoken one.The fourth paragraph provides the general information about settled timeframes, emphasizing the starting, turning and ending points of the timeline.The fifth paragraph explains the selections of cases used in the research and provides arguments supporting them.The sixth paragraph provides a general overview of literature written specifically on this topic. Unfortunately, there are no enough resources and the closest type of literature can be divided into two categories: primary sources, which include official documentation, governmental statements, etc. and secondary sources, which include works on diplomacy and bilateral cooperation between states involved into strategy implementation, social surveys.The seventh paragraph describes the structure of current research, which includes introduction, three chapters and conclusion.The second chapter provides information about Russia’s perception which exists towards states, involved in the current research. The chapter consists of three paragraphs: “Russia on a crossroad”, “the perception of China in Russia” and “the perception of Germany in Russia”. the first part shows the distribution of preferences in Russian society into two main camps. The second and third parts give more specified information about Russia’s perception of both the state and its society involved into the cross-cultural years` strategy.General information of each paragraph:The first paragraph tells about the mainstreams which follow Russian political elite, scientists, research groups and mass media- Westernizers and Sinophiles. "Westernizers represent Russia’s historic aspirations to belong to the Western world, whereas Sinophiles — while remaining distinct — often tap into old Slavophile beliefs in Russia’s cultural uniqueness and need for a separate path of development."The second paragraph describes that the Russians` positive attitude towards China overbalances negative views of its government but, none the less, not without the interference of the Russian government and mass media policy. The situation with the “strategic partnership” remains unclear but due to the global affairs, it gains more and more support from the Russian population.The third paragraph describes that during the timeframes settled for research the attitude of Russians towards both Germany and Germans was highly positive, what also was achieved by a wise policy of interference of the Russian government into mass media course and representation of information, especially during the period of Angela Merkel as the Chancellor of Germany.The third chapter is “Cross-cultural years”. It provides the outline about foreign policy and public diplomacy in Russia and the strategy of cross-cultural years, which is a part of it. This part is divided into five paragraphs: “Cultural diplomacy in Russia and its implications in foreign policy of state”, “Cross-cultural years as a strategy of Russian public diplomacy and its implication in foreign policy”, “Implementation of CCY-strategy towards China in period of 2003-2013 ”, “Implementation of CCYstrategy towards Germany in period of 2003-2013” and “Examination of the theory”. The first paragraph gives a brief observation of Russian public diplomacy, its main points, tendencies and problems. The second part provides a general introduction into the strategy of cross-cultural years. The third and fourth parts show how this strategy was applied towards Germany and China in period from 2003 to 2013. The fifth paragraph examines the cross-cultural years by means of Allison`s model.General information of each paragraph:The first paragraph gives an observation of Russian public diplomacy which is quite young phenomenon and still in the stage of formation. The Russian government understands the increasing influence of public diplomacy on the international agenda and states, and that it is impossible to ensure the national interests of Russia without resources of public diplomacy. There can be defined two chronological periods which determines the geopolitical shift in Russian public diplomacy. All the changes of Russian diplomacy are fixed in the concept of foreign policy of Russia, which is being edited in accordance with changes in international situation and which fourth edition is now in power.The second part provides the strategy of cross-cultural years(“perekrestnye goda”) introduced in 2003 by Russian government aimed providing a basis for bilateral political relations. It involves the arrangement of a number of events in order to strengthen historical and cultural ties between states and promote future bilateral cooperation in cultural, scientific, economical spheres, etc. Special working groups formed at the ministries of both states are responsible for managing such kinds of events. Listed events receive collective financial support from involved sides, using government, private or mixed-type financing. One of the priorities is the promotion of achievements of Russia in different spheres by providing a constant presence of Russian culture.The third part provides information about implementation of the cross-cultural years` strategy towards China in details. It gives an overview of each of three crosscultural years separately, including spheres of cooperation, main institutions and organizations, description of the scheduled events, main purposes and aims of scheduled year, shows tendencies and results which became the outcomes of conducted events and turned out to be a successful supplement for strengthening interstate relations.The fourth part provides in-depth information about implementation of the cross-cultural years` strategy towards Germany. It represents the general points of each of three cross-cultural years. Main of them include purposes and aims of scheduled year, directions, spheres of cooperation, description of the scheduled events main institutions and organizations. Following this it shows tendencies and results. These outcomes resulted as a successful supplement for strengthening interstate relations.The fifth part uses the collected data from previous paragraphs and examines it by means of Allison`s model to show the whole working process and prove its use as a tool of public dipomacy.The conclusion part provides summary of the conducted research, sets out the basic points of the conducted research and the main arguments of the thesis, answers the main and secondary research question,.The current research will be a valuable addition to works on public diplomacy of Russia and especially on works about cross-cultural years. It is a new overview on a topic which yet has not received much attention from political scientists. |
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