The normative interaction between Russia and the EU is a significant component of foreign policy for both Moscow and Brussels. It reflects important general patterns of the symbolic interaction between the West and the rest of the world. The theory of hegemony of E.Laclau and C.Mouffe and post-Marxist discourse analysis show that the European symbolic mapping today is based on historicism and orientalism, embodied in the discursive figure of «transition». The situation has changed recently after the emergence of the «resilience» notion (as the ability of states and societies to adapt to turbulence) in the neoliberal hegemony of the EU. The interpretation of this concept by the EU directly links it with the normative component: only liberal democracies can be resilient in the long run. This approach fills the previous structure of the symbolic political map with the new content - some countries are subject to more exclusion. For instance, Russia moves from its conditional semi-peripheral position to the periph