Russia's Soft Power in Near Abroad: Instruments and Challenges

The “soft power” as an important concept was firstly entered to the political discourse of Vladimir Putin in February 2012; This concept, which is now of great concern for Kremlin, is derived from diverse and somehow contradictory resources with mostly governmental and formal natures. While focusing on Russia’s soft power towards its near abroad, using Nye’s conceptual framework, the present literature tries to study Kremlin’s goals of developing soft power and its soft power resources and instruments towards near abroad. Through studying Russia’s soft power resources in culture, economics and politics, the authors conclude that Russia’s political values are traceable in all the three mentioned areas. In fact, the purpose of this paper is to answer the following questions: what are the resources and instruments for Russia’s soft power that have empowered Russia regionally? And what are the constraints for Russian soft power in the region? The proposed hypothesis is that Russia's soft power in near abroad encompasses Russian language, culture, media, Orthodox Church, Russian compatriots as well as trade diplomacy. But instrumental look at soft power resources in this strategic region, as well as ineffectiveness, have weakened Russia's desirable convergence in near abroad. Using descriptive-analytical method, and based library and internet resources, the authors try to find an answer for the research question.