Call it ‘sharp power’ Political scientist Vera Grantseva explains the transformation of Russia’s global influence

The Trump administration’s campaign to gut the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — “a foremost tool of U.S. soft power,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations — has accelerated America’s declining influence around the world, warn critics. Earlier this month, The New Yorker described “America’s soft-power retreat” as an opportunity for China and its “unrelenting appetite” for global sway. Meduza spoke to political scientist and Paris Institute of Political Studies lecturer Vera Grantseva earlier this week about Russia’s foreign influence efforts. She argues that “sharp power” is the better term for discussing Russia.

Formally, the primary institution responsible for coordinating Russian soft power is the Federal Agency for Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation — known by the only slightly less ugly name Rossotrudnichestvo. (The focus on the CIS in the agency’s name betrays the limited reach of Russia’s most potent soft power.) Rossotrudnichestvo has existed in its current form since 2008, but Moscow has operated something like it for the past century. 

Grantseva told Meduza that Rossotrudnichestvo ostensibly has a five-point mission: (1) promote Russian education and culture, (2) promote the Russian language, (3) support compatriots living abroad, (4) foster international development, and most recently (5) conduct “historical and memorial activities.” She said there have been three eras of post-Soviet Russian soft power, arguing that Moscow’s influence peaked around 2007. In the period that followed, the authorities institutionalized and formalized Russian influence (for example, with the emergence of the Russkiy Mir Foundation and the reconstitution of Rossotrudnichestvo). Finally, since late 2013 and early 2014 (certainly after the annexation of Crimea), Russian soft power has declined, argued Grantseva.

Before the authorities captured Russia’s soft-power institutions, organizations like the Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Foundation, the Russian International Affairs Council, and the Valdai Discussion Club resembled groups in the United States like Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy. They served as tools for building bridges with other countries through “track-II diplomacy.” However, without transparency or democratic oversight, the Russian state’s encroachment led to bureaucratization, formalism, and internal censorship, Grantseva told Meduza.

She argues that Russian influence went from “soft” to “sharp” as the state exerted more control over cultural programs, educational exchanges, the recruitment of international university students, and so on. As Russia has grown more authoritarian, its soft power has taken on more “destructive” and “negative” aims, seeking to “destabilize and undermine” instead of fostering cooperation and finding common ground. Today, Russian influence looks for “weak points” in adversaries.

“Sowing discord” is now a familiar trope of Russian influence operations, but this defining characteristic is relatively new in the post-Soviet era. According to Grantseva, “real, genuine” Russian soft power initially focused on disseminating Russian perspectives in a world dominated by Western, especially American, thinking. She says soft-power institutions pivoted “from defense to offense” about a decade ago (she cites the key moments of Vladimir Putin’s September 2013 Valdai speech and the 2014 seizure of Crimea). The change was especially evident in media projects like Russia Today, which shed its goals of building cultural and educational ties and “was effectively repurposed as a tool of aggression.

Grantseva told Meduza that similar problems have plagued both Russian and Chinese soft power — namely, excessive state control, intolerance for pluralism, and a tendency to prioritize intelligence work over diaspora engagement. “Why do they face so many problems around the world, not just in Europe or the U.S.? Because there is total state control and an attempt to use cultural centers as a cover for monitoring their own citizens, conducting political intelligence, and engaging in espionage,” argued Grantseva. Not only are host countries inhospitable to such guests, but the diasporas can also sense when “other preoccupations” guide the work of cultural centers.

While Russian influence operations are now “on the offensive,” the country’s soft-power narratives largely fail to articulate “positive solutions” to today’s biggest political, economic, and social challenges, said Grantseva. Russia claims a rich legacy in fighting injustice, from imperialism to Nazism, but its propaganda is weak on vision when it’s not looking backward. (The invasion of Ukraine has undermined Moscow’s supposed crusade against empire, as well.) Instead, Russian soft power focuses on demonstrating that other countries — particularly in the morally decadent West — are even worse.

Grantseva pointed out that these narratives expose a paradox: anti-Westernism has a receptive audience around the world, but Russia has not made itself more essential to these populations by preaching what it has. Even in China, despite Moscow’s great pivot to the East, the children of political elites prefer to study in Europe and the United States. Rossotrudnichestvo’s “New Generation” program has tried to replicate America’s success attracting (and, to some degree, indoctrinating) foreign future elites, luring some 300,000 university students, said Grantseva. However, Russia’s program draws most of these people from fellow CIS countries, not the far-flung corners of the world.