Contemporary Russian politics is essentially a politics of exceptions. While it is obvious that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a state of exception, this development is only part of a larger strategy developing in Russia since the 2000s. This strategy that defies any attempts at a long-term normalization (and thus any normative orders) manifests itself in political decisions on the international and domestic level, for instance, in social and cultural politics, law-making, and (bio)technological breakthrough. After February 2022, the ideology of exceptionalism, with its specific elements such as Russian pseudo-conservatism, as a loose set of vague attitudes that serve as background for rapidly changing tactical orientations, the idea of a sovereign science and the rhetoric of isolationism - has amalgamated itself as the foundation of situationally oriented political decisions of the Russian government. Studying and understanding it means understanding the fundamental principles of contemporary Russian politics, such as its militant decisionism, pseudo-historical foundations, and aversion towards the principles of the common good (as opposed to the idea of satisfying momentary interests of political actors).

The key subjects of the analysis will be Russian political and legal practices based on the idea of the primacy of exceptions, but also specific cases and debates, including related publications in academic journals and social/mass media. A long-term theoretical goal of the project is to reconstruct the development of the notion of exception, considering its relation to other notions (such as ‘exceptionality’, ‘uniqueness’, and ‘exclusion’), and, in a second step, to present a structured and nuanced theory of exceptions. The project is open to collaboration with scholars specializing in the history of law, bioethics, sociology, psychology, economics, and political theory.