Özet:

Russia appeared to be a country that did not eschew from resorting to hard power instruments such as military intervention and economic sanctions in the post-Cold War period. Moscow fought a battle against Georgia over South Ossetia in August 2008. It also sent its military personnel to Crimea to capture strategic points and to take control of the critical infrastructure in February 2014, shortly before the referendum which would decide whether the peninsula would merge with Russia. Russia also occasionally cut off natural gas supplies to Georgia and Ukraine in the middle of winter when these two pro-Western states failed to pay their accumulated natural gas debt. Yet, Moscow starting from the mid-2000s has been taking serious and systematic steps to strengthen and expand its soft power base in its immediate neighbourhood as well. These efforts speeded up in the wake of colour revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan which resulted in the replacement of friendly governments that paid special attention to Russian concerns and sensitivities with new leaders and cadres that aimed to bring their countries closer to the West. This article will examine the Central Asian dimension of Russia’s soft power policy by borrowing the soft power concept of Joseph Nye. Nye defines soft power as the capacity to have an impact on or shape the preferences of others by relying upon intangible assets such as political values, international institutions and culture. So, the study will start with the analysis of the extent of recognition of Russia’s political values, especially its sovereign democracy model which prioritizes the demands of the state over those of individuals, lays emphasis on the principles of independence, sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs in the intercourse with other states and underlines the primacy of traditional and conservative values such as unity, solidarity and family over individualism, feminism and LGBT rights by the Central Asian political elites. The article will then move on to explore the extent of Russia’s success in exporting the main tenets of the sovereign democracy model to Central Asia by examining some of the agreements, declarations, decisions and practices of the international institutions such as the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which play significant role in the region. The study will end with the assessment of the cultural aspect of the Russian soft power in Central Asia by investigating the prevalence of Russian language, Russian higher education institutions, Russian media and Russian mass entertainment in the region.

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