Words as Premises for Action: Russian identity formulations in the Russia-Georgian war

On the 8th of August 2008, war broke out between Russia and Georgia. The war lasted only five days, but it killed hundreds and left thousands of refugees. Today the war is almost forgotten, but the shadow of it still lies over the relationship between Russia and Georgia and the people living in the area. This thesis aims to contribute to a research agenda that goes beyond rationalist and positivist views on conflict and war in international and security studies. I will investigate Russian identifications of Self and Other in relations with Georgia before, under and after the war through a discourse analysis. Through understanding identity as relational – meaning that the Self is constructed in conversations about the other, this is also a study of Russia’s perception of Georgia. Furthermore, I show how Russia’s image of itself and of Georgia, laid out premises for its foreign policy and actions towards Georgia. In order to also say something about how and whether Russia’s reasoning on Georgia has developed since the outbreak of the war in 2008, the time frame is from the years 2000-2019. I find that Russia’s changing linguistic representations of Saakashvili’s Georgia, construing this regime as a danger to the Georgian people, served to legitimize the Russian military intervention in Georgia 2008