The semantic field of the concept of "sovereignty" in the discourse of the President of the Russian Federation in the context of international tension (2022-2023)

Nikolaev Il'ya Viktorovich Senior Lecturer; Department of Foreign History and International Relations; Southern Federal University 344082, Russia, Rostov region, Rostov-On-Don, Pushkinskaya str., 140, office 213 nikolaev_polit@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The start of the special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022 marked a milestone moment for the transformation of Russia's foreign policy strategy and its reorientation towards building sovereignty based on the principles of national self-determination, its own model of democracy, anti-globalism and anti-hegemonism. The path of rethinking, which began in the mid-2000s, after unsuccessful attempts to prevent the expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe and the "color" revolutions in the post-Soviet countries, could not do without using and updating the concept of "sovereignty", which logically fits into the agenda of the Russian elites.

Hypothetically, it should be assumed that the needs of ideological support for self-determination and ensuring the legitimization of the decision taken should give an impetus to the reinterpretation and new conceptualization of the verbal symbol "sovereignty" in the official discourse of the Russian government. As part of the research, an attempt was made to identify the semantic contours of the modern understanding of sovereignty, which are broadcast in the official discourse of the Russian government.

Method and material

Sovereignty as a category of political science has a complex and multifaceted semantic field dating back to the Middle Ages and the period of the formation of a special thesaurus of political philosophy at the turn of Modern times. The classical concept of sovereignty is the justification of the domineering authority of the ruler in the context of secularization of society ^{[20, p. 6]}. The early forms of political legitimization based on the explication of the hierarchy of the "city of God" on the social relations of the "city of the earth" ^[3] cease to be effective and require changes in accordance with the changing social consciousness towards secularism. The sovereign in the history of political thought has consistently been monarchs, states, nations, peoples, and other more exotic political entities.

In Russian political discourse, the concept of "sovereignty" has no historically rooted practice of use. In Russia, the period of existence of similar feudal relations was replaced by the era of direct codependency between man and the state in the person of a personalized ruler. As O. A. Skoropudova notes, even by the 19th century, the Russian intellectual tradition had not developed the practice of using the concept of "sovereignty": its semantic content was replaced by ideas of "independence, identity, freedom, harmony, security, cultural and economic independence, autocracy and Orthodoxy" ^{[21, p. 115]}. The concept of "sovereignty", as well as "sovereign", has taken the form of a foreign scientific term in the Russian political space, reinterpreted twice: in the theory of law, and later in political science; and in real political discourse.

The alienation of the concept of "sovereignty" for Russian society has led both to its saturation with a highly abstract philosophical meaning and to the emptiness of the semantic field, which is due to the fact that there is no specific referent of this concept in the form of a type of social relations fixed in an institutional form. The state of the empty sign, as understood by E. Laclau and S. Mouff ^{[23, p. 96]}, acquired by the concept of "sovereignty" in modern Russian political discourse, predetermined the struggle for it of various ideological discourses in order to gain hegemony over the signification of the sign. These processes have overlapped with the global crisis of interpretation of the concept of "sovereignty" against the background of economic globalization, legal and political universalism, and numerous acts that violate the usual framework of the concept (the declaration of independence of Kosovo, U.S. jurisdiction in Guantanamo Bay, the de facto independence of Taiwan, etc.) ^{[22, p. 234]}. An additional difficulty for the integrity of the concept is created by the transition of Russian society, along with other leading powers, to a networked state in which it is impossible to accurately identify a single decision-making entity ^{[8, p. 98]}.

Based on the cognitive-discursive approach ^{[5, pp. 23-52]}, in this study, the concept of "sovereignty" in the discourse of the Russian government is considered as a verbal political symbol used for opportunistic purposes by political actors in the semiotic status that is necessary to promote political positions, decisions, leaders, etc. To achieve the research goal of identifying boundaries. the semantic field of the concept, the method of directed qualitative content analysis of public speeches and speeches of the president, voiced in the period from February 21, 2022 to December 8, 2023, was used. The President's texts are the quintessence of the official discourse of state power. The lower chronological boundary coincides with the date of recognition of the independence of the DPR and the LPR, as a result of which a special military operation was launched. The upper limit of the period under study is associated with the actual start of Vladimir Putin's election campaign on the eve of the 2024 presidential election, which temporarily changed the discursive policy and could affect the results of the analysis of the semantics of "sovereignty".

The results of the study

Contextual analysis

The first stage of the research consisted in analyzing the contextual field of references to the verbal symbol "sovereignty", the task of which was to identify the entire complex of meanings and connotations involved in the construction of the semantic field. This research practice has revealed several areas of semantic content of the concept of "sovereignty" in the discourse of the President of the Russian Federation. In particular, we have identified areas that define (1) conceptual boundaries at the theoretical level, (2) internal features, (3) external features, and (4) the economic content of sovereignty. Let's describe each direction in more detail.

1. The president's speech activity during the year and a half after the beginning of his speech was aimed not only at filling the concept of "sovereignty" with a specific historical meaning, but also at a theoretical understanding of this phenomenon. It is important to recall our preliminary thesis about the absence of a well-established practice of applying the concept in the Russian political field. This fact actualizes the theoretical remarks of the president, which are necessary to fill the gap.

The fundamental statement in the official discourse is the idea of the direct connection between the sovereignty of the state and the concept of multipolarity. It is in the context of the latter that the President is attempting to build a theoretical model of sovereignty. Its overall architecture can be expressed in two statements:

• "our country stands for the implementation in practice of the fundamental international legal principle of the sovereign equality of States and the right of everyone to their own development model" ^[15];
• "only sovereign countries can count on a sovereign future" ^[14].

Sovereignty in the context of the emerging multipolar world is understood, on the one hand, as the right and opportunity of a national community to independently design its own model of a political system under conditions of non—interference from external forces and the absence of an imposed model; on the other hand, as an existential condition for the existence of this political system. Thus, sovereignty is both a process and a result at the same time.

At the beginning of the period under study, the president's discourse denied the structural diversity of the phenomenon of sovereignty: "Sovereignty in the 21st century," says Vladimir Putin, —cannot be partial or fragmented" ^[14]. However, in a later speech at the high meeting of the Council of Legislators (April 28, 2023), the structure of sovereignty is described in the following terms: "To strengthen its sovereignty in all its components: politics and economics, science and technology, education and culture, based primarily on internal resources, natural advantages, and the most powerful creative potential of our multinational people" ^[9]. In the same quote, we also see an attempt to identify the sources of sovereignty, i.e. the potential contributing to the independence of the state, but it is not possible to arrange them in a typological series due to the lack of a common basis: generalized "internal resources" are adjacent to operationalized natural factors and human capital.

2. Internal factors, following the logic proposed by the President during a meeting of the Council of Legislators, are a priority in the process of achieving and ensuring state sovereignty, despite the fact that the number of mentions of sovereignty in the context of internal political processes is inferior to mentions of foreign policy aspects (23 versus 62 in absolute terms). Internal sovereignty, in the understanding of E. A. Alekseenkova, "guarantees the existence of a stable functioning political system and legitimate government capable of protecting the territory of the state and its national interests" ^{[1, p. 105]}. The sovereignty of the state in the decision-making process is one of the aspects of the domestic political trend of the semiosis of the studied verbal symbol. "The decision of a sovereign country that has an unconditional right [to ensure security—" [14]. It should be noted that the state is not separated from the people in the president's speech, this is an important aspect of signification, complementary to the classical concept of sovereignty, at the same time it is also a tool for legitimizing political decisions in the discursive practice of modern political elites. Equally important are appeals to sovereignty in the context of setting goals and assessing the situation in the country.: "Today we need the consolidation of the whole society," the president said at the signing ceremony of the treaties on the incorporation of new regions into the Russian Federation on September 30, 2022, "and such cohesion can only be based on sovereignty, freedom, creativity, and justice. Our values are humanity, mercy and compassion" ^[12]. Sovereignty in this context is adjacent to universal ethical spiritual values, inevitably mimicking them in the flow of speech. Subsequently, in March 2023, this direction of sovereignty semanticization for internal use will be conceptualized within the framework of the concept of "value sovereignty" ^[10]. The ethical characterization of sovereignty within a country is complemented by references to human rights and freedoms: "Sovereignty is a guarantee of everyone's freedom. And in our tradition, a person cannot feel truly free if his people, Fatherland, Russia, and Homeland are not free" ^[11]. Sovereignty is defined as a condition for the consolidation of society, including through the development of civil society institutions ^[17] and a "sovereign education system" ^[9].

The semantic field of internal sovereignty is only partially conceptualized, as it serves to set off the foreign policy aspects of the phenomenon. The classical understanding of the sovereignty of the state within the country, expressed in its dominance over other political and social institutions in the process of making binding decisions, does not reveal its presence in the president's discourse. Instead, the internal aspects of sovereignty are filled with allusions to the manifestation of external independence from interference in the internal affairs of the country.

3. The foreign policy aspects of sovereignty have been discussed in as much detail as possible in the President's discourse, but it is not possible to assert the existence of a coherent concept. In the conditions of the new world order, which is considered by the president to be only multipolar, "only strong states and sovereign states can have their say" ^[14], moreover, they will set "the rules for the content of the new world order" ^[14]. The key players in the updated version of the global system of politics are civilizational states ("for Russia, a country of civilization, one of the original, sovereign centers of a vast multipolar world" ^[9]), which, due to their own historical and cultural uniqueness, are a priori attuned to leading positions in international relations. At the same time, the necessary condition for ensuring independence and independence on the world stage has repeatedly been noted throughout the period under study as the military potential and transmission of the country's military force. "A modern, efficient army and navy are the key to the security and sovereignty of the country" ^[19].

The justification for the need for sovereignty "from the opposite" is situations in which subjects of international relations completely or partially lose their own sovereignty under pressure or as a result of direct intervention by external forces, primarily represented by the world hegemon represented by the United States and its NATO allies. Thus, among other things, Libya, Ukraine, and the European Union have lost their sovereignty; Iraq, Syria, the peoples of Africa, and Serbia are facing threats to their sovereignty. Nevertheless, each of these subjects recognizes the desire to gain true sovereignty in the sense in which the president understands it, and also expresses full support for these aspirations from the official authorities of Russia. As a manifestation of the direct actions of the "collective West" to infringe on the sovereign powers of governments, the president mentions military operations, financial control, "the sanctions fever of the West, its undisguised, aggressive attempts to impose behavioral models on other countries" ^[13]. Continuing to conceptualize the reaction to the latter phenomenon, Vladimir Putin notes that sanctions against Russia will continue to be imposed "without any formal pretext, just because we exist and will never compromise our sovereignty, national interests and our values" ^[18]. Western globalist political elites thus seek to "shift their own failures to other countries — to Russia, to China, which defend their point of view, build a sovereign development policy, not obeying the dictates of supranational elites" ^[16].

In criticizing the foreign policy activities of Western countries and their relations to the sovereignty of other states, Vladimir Putin does not skimp on metaphorical images and biting expressions, for example: "The West is ready to step over everything to preserve the neocolonial system that allows it to parasitize, in fact, plunder the world at the expense of the power of the dollar and technological dictate, collect from a real tribute to humanity, to extract the main source of unearned prosperity, the rent of the hegemon. The preservation of this rent is their key, genuine and absolutely selfish motive. That is why total desuverenization meets their interests" ^[12].

One of the most important subjects in the context of which the verbal symbol "sovereignty" manifests itself in the foreign policy aspect is, of course, the Ukrainian crisis. In this field, the conceptualization of the symbol is more structured.: as a recognized right and opportunity for post-Soviet countries to exist and develop without Russia's participation based on the principles of cooperation and good neighborliness, as well as as an object requiring protection and achievement (on the sovereignty of the Russian Federation, the DPR and the LPR).

4. The economic aspects of the country's sovereignty characteristics play a significant role in the president's discourse, but they are significantly inferior to foreign policy (27 times versus 62 in absolute terms over the entire chronological period). The most important industries in which the official position of the government suggests an independent strategy are industrial safety, modern production technologies, social security and training of the personnel reserve. Only national "economies with full, rather than partial, technological, production, personnel, and scientific potential" are recognized as sufficiently sovereign ^[14]. Sovereignty is mentioned in the president's speeches in the neighborhood of the largest Russian corporations: Rostec, Rosatom, Gazprom, Roscosmos, as well as the collective agricultural and industrial complex. It is noteworthy that in the president's discourse, economic sovereignty is provided (or should be provided) by high-tech industries, while the extractive industry, which remains the leading one in Russia's GDP structure in the 2020s, is mentioned along with the verbal symbol under study only once. This reference concerns the problem of rational use of natural resources and does not address the issue of the industry's role in economic independence.: "We rely on the prudent, economically smart development of Russia's natural resources based on the strictest environmental standards. And we will primarily use the extracted raw materials for deep redistribution within the country" ^[13].

Within the framework of the economic characteristics of the phenomenon of sovereignty, the President's discourse repeatedly refers to foreign policy aspects. The general message is contained in the thesis expressed at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (June 17, 2022): "Truly sovereign states are always committed to equal partnership, to contribute to global development" ^[14]. In the economic context, the President returns the concept of sovereignty to the field of international relations and mutual recognition of economic entities, recognizing the value of free trade on mutually beneficial grounds, contrary to the economic liberal order provided by the military superiority of Western countries. The latter is criticized for resource, financial and logistical blackmail, sanctions policy and imbalance in the global distribution of benefits.

Thus, a contextual analysis of the references to the verbal symbol "sovereignty" in the president's discourse shows us a significant shift into foreign policy forms of semantic content of the concept. Internal sovereignty in its classical interpretation of the primacy of the institution of the state in the process of developing and making decisions in the public space of the country acts as a background, is not emphasized due to the lack of ideological demand. In the context of the transformation of the world order, in which the Russian Federation is trying on the role of a locomotive, political discourse is reoriented towards the foreign policy agenda, which makes internal sovereignty a given that is not in demand for the political positioning of the subject of power.

Predicative analysis

The second stage of the study of the semantic field of the verbal symbol "sovereignty" in the president's discourse was the analysis of predicates formulated in the form of adjectives accompanying the mention of the concept. At this stage, we attempted to classify predicates on a number of grounds.

According to the sphere of implementation, the President's speeches mention: "digital", "cultural", "educational", "value", "spiritual", "technological", "economic", "political", "personnel", "scientific", "production" sovereignties. All of these types occur repeatedly, which indicates a purposeful construction of the semantic field of the verbal symbol. Despite the variety of fields of application related to internal political and socio-economic processes, it should be noted that the external characteristic of the basic concept prevails in all lexical constructions. In essence, each type of sovereignty implies the independence of a particular industry from interference by factors and entities outside the Russian state. In this sense, it is reasonable to assume that the above constructions are secondary to the main task of using "sovereignty" — the assertion of Russia's independence and independence on the world stage. In relation to it, the involvement of various types of sovereignty is embedded in the logic of cause-and-effect relationships: achieving independence in certain sectors of society is a condition for ensuring the country's sovereignty in the foreign policy dimension. In particular, "technological sovereignty," which has received the most constructive response from the Russian establishment, is only superficially revealed in the president's discourse. The top leader leaves room for maneuver against the background of discussions about two competing interpretations — Deputy Prime Minister A. R. Belousov, who understands technological sovereignty as parity with the leading countries of the world, and Deputy Prime Minister D. N. Chernyshenko, who sees in him the possession of critical technologies for the global economy ^{[4, p. 552]}.

According to the subject-bearer, sovereignty in the presidential discourse is represented in a lesser variety: "state", "national", which generally corresponds to earlier assumptions about the dominance of foreign policy content in the semantic field of the concept. Current trends demonstrate a wide range of possible bearers of sovereignty. "Sovereign subjects," according to A. K. Kamkin and M. I. Sigachev, "can no longer be only nation-states, but also civilizations, (neo)empires, regions, ethnic worlds, and large political spaces in general" ^{[6, p. 923]}. The recognition of the highest degree of subjectivity in international relations in the presidential discourse is natural for Russian political practice, expressed in the government's desire to build a system of control over other alternative actors, whether they are large export-oriented corporations, most of which in Russia have a significant presence of state capital; social movements and parties that preserve only certain aspects of subjectivity in the country; extremist groups that the Government is effectively fighting. State sovereignty is complemented by "national sovereignty", which connects the phenomenon with the semantic field of the classical concept of "nation-state", which underlies the modern world order. However, the phenomenon of the nation in the dimension of the political discourse of modern Russia has been deconstructed using the concept of "civilization", which is repeatedly juxtaposed with "sovereignty" in the president's speeches. It is noteworthy that the official political discourse in recent years has lost the essential characteristic of the constitutional system of the country, pointing to the people as the bearer of sovereignty. There is no such predicate in the chronological period under study.

According to the completeness of sovereignty realization, the following predicates are present in the president's discourse: "real", "full", "partial", "fragmentary", "authentic". They reflect the assumption of the possibility of measuring the degree of sovereignty of a particular entity. Given that Vladimir Putin repeatedly refers to examples of other States and international organizations in his speeches, the degrees of sovereignty serve comparative purposes. Demonstrating a negative scenario in the event of failure to take the necessary actions to ensure their own independence is a rhetorical device and is implemented through illustrating the situations of countries that have experienced external influence both in the form of direct military intervention and in the form of economic dependence. The acceptable form of Russian sovereignty for the president's discourse is "real" / "genuine", expressed in transparent conditions of recognition on the world stage as a self-sufficient independent player; "full", implemented in all spheres of the state and society.

Thus, the analysis of sovereignty predicates in the president's discourse demonstrates the multiplicity of types of sovereignty involved in the maintenance of the key semantic element — independence from external interference. The subjectivity of sovereignty supports this concept, recognizing as its bearer a nation-state based on civilizational uniqueness and a special cultural and historical purpose. For Russia, only the maximum degree of realization of its own sovereignty on the world stage is possible, deviation from which acts as an existential threat to statehood. Ultimately, the key form of a country's sovereignty is "strategic," which gives it the right and opportunity to independently determine the path of development.

Conclusion

The concept of "sovereignty" is presented in fragmented form in the public texts of the President in the period after the start of his election campaign and before the start of the election campaign. It is necessary to consider only the discourse of sovereignty, in the sense in which it is understood by N. D. Arutyunova — as "speech immersed in life" ^{[2, pp. 136-137]}. The use of the verbal symbol "sovereignty" is a specific situational switching of the mode to a specific characteristic of the phenomenon. This mode is connected by choosing a specific predicate, which allows expanding the semantic field of sovereignty indefinitely, turning it into an "empty sign" of political communication, characteristic of the current situation of temporary official ideology. Some invariant components refer to the rudimentary meanings of the concept of "independence" attributed to the state as a political institution on the world stage.

It is noteworthy that for the period 2016-2021, researcher G. V. Kotsur notes the dominance of the security discourse in the semantic field of "sovereignty", while recognizing its nuclear status for the ideological structure of the Russian government ^{[7, p. 34]}. Our study demonstrates a slight transformation of the semantic field. Of course, foreign policy connotations and security issues continue to dominate the president's discourse in 2022-2023, but there is an obvious tendency to expand the semantics of "sovereignty" by introducing other predicates. Fragmentation of the concept has led to the emergence of new specific forms, such as "technological", "value-based", "cultural", "strategic", "complete", "partial", etc. These predicative characteristics represent an interpretive repertoire that allows you to rebuild the semantic field of the concept depending on the market requirements of the situation.

Despite its technological nature, the invariant core of the concept of "sovereignty" remains in the president's discourse. Firstly, it retains its status as an attribute of a full-fledged state capable of independently ensuring its interests. Secondly, sovereignty is constituted as "independence from ...", thus, an agonal discourse is formed, within which there is always a real or perceived threat of interference by external actors in Russia's sovereign affairs. Given the international situation and the continuing level of confrontation between our country and the "collective West," such a communicative strategy by the president's speechwriters seems appropriate and relevant.