Abstract
This paper explores historically Russia’s status as a great power in first the European and later the global states system. It argues that its role as a ‘superpower’ was really a temporary aberration during the Cold War period and that since the collapse of the Soviet Union Russian foreign policy has been essentially guided by the desire to reaffirm its great power status and emergence as an energy superpower centered on the export of oil and gas. Western policy towards Russia needs to be guided by a far more sophisticated awareness of this transformation and a greater understanding of the importance of the symbols of power and status that might look rather dated and backward looking in terms of the construction of regional European security and the ‘post-national’ project of the European Union.