The Partnership for Modernisation: Contradictions of the Russian Modernisation Agenda

Abstract

The Partnership for Modernisation was an attempt to re-set the EU-Russia relationship. This article discusses how far modernisation can be the basis for a more productive relationship. The article argues that rather than a shared approach with the EU there is a particular, historical Russian approach to modernisation. It discusses how far this constitutes a separate model and identifies a range of problems such as corruption and human rights which undermine this model even in its own terms. The article suggests that modernisation is indeed a basis for a continuing EU-Russia partnership, in spite of recent crises. However, it has to be a partnership which accepts the specificity of Russian development yet also helps deliver a more sustainable path of modernisation.Reference to modernisation has been a perennial feature of western writing on the history of Russia (Dixon, 1999, p. 5). There have been few periods in Russian history when western observers have not talked of Russia undergoing 'modernisation'. Russian and Soviet leaders from Peter the Great and Alexander II to Stalin, Gorbachev and now Putin have also seen themselves as modernisers. In addition modernisation has in one way or another been undertaken with reference to the West, whether as a model, a useful source of technology or in competition with it. The launching of the Partnership for Modernisation (P4M) between the EU and Russia at the EU-Russia summit in Rostov-on-Don on 1 June 2010 therefore resonates with key historical themes in the Russian-western relationship.The purpose of this article is to explore the significance of this new 'partnership' both in the context of recent EU-Russia relations and in the context of broader perceptions of modernisation both within Russia and in the West. It argues that while the language of

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