Investigating Putinism: History Over Ideology

NB: This article is interesting but open to caveats. One does not have to be a Putinist or Russian chauvinist to object to the statement that Russia started World War II by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939 (see below); simply aware of historical facts. Were Britain and France responsible for WW2 becuase they signed the Munich agreement on Sudetenland in October 1938 ? Or by delaying a potential agreement with the USSR prior to August 1939? Theoretically speaking, what ideologyy is devoid of what the author calls memory politics? The two are inextricably linked together. DS

Dina Khapaeva

In today’s Russia, memory politics has supplanted ideology as the primary instrument of political legitimation. This hinders efforts to explain the unique features of Putinism by approaching it as a political ideology.

Is Putinism a Form of Fascism?

Investigating Putinism means understanding why, for the past 25 years, Russians have accepted life in a notoriously corrupt society, which lacks basic protections for individual rights, and is ruled by the mafia-like secret services. Why do Russians continue fighting a brutal war against Ukraine, which has already resulted in almost a million casualties? What specific features underpin the resilience of the Putin regime?

Before the war, analysts claimed that Putinism offered “stability and order,” supposedly much desired by Russians after the turbulent years following the fall of communism, and that the oil-driven economy delivered relative prosperity. None of this seems convincing today, especially since Ukrainians have finally been allowed to bring war into Russia’s territory.

With an eye to the powerful ideologies of the twentieth century, such as fascism and communism, scholars try to explain Russians’ support for Putin’s regime by its successful ideology. What else could explain how the Kremlin achieves such political feats?

The idea that Putinism is a form of fascism became popular among scholars during Putin’s second term. Political scientist Alexander Motyl was one of the first to articulate this thesis.[1] There are undeniable similarities between Putinism and fascism, such as the worship of force, the cult of the leader, rule through terror, a longing for the medieval past, nationalism, militarism, and so on. Motyl emphasizes the “hypernationalist, imperialist, and supremacist ideology,” typical of both regimes.[2] Historian Timothy Snyder accentuates the influence of pro-fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyin, whom Putin quotes in his speeches.[3] Additionally, many Russian public figures harbor an undisguised respect for fascism.

Debates about equating Putinism with fascism provided a pretext to normalize Putinism. During the annexation of Crimea, Stephen F. Cohen led this trend. Accusing his opponents of unfairly “demonizing Putin,” he warned of the threat of a “new Cold War” and a nuclear apocalypse.[4]

Marlène Laruelle argues that Putinism should not be seen as a fascist regime or even as dominated by the far right.[5] placing Putinism on the “broad spectrum of illiberalism,” Laruelle invites us to view it as one of many conservative regimes, rather than as a sui generis monster. Alongside its negative traits, such classification underscores certain aspects of Putinism that are regarded favorably by the Western left, including the refusal to accept “geo-political alignment with the US,” the notion that “the West is the normative hegemon of the world,” and opposition to “economic neoliberalism.”[6] Consequently, Putin’s regime is defined as “post-liberal” and its ideology is described as being created to oppose liberalism, after Russia experienced it firsthand.[7] Laruelle compares Putin’s ideology to a jazz band, where each member plays their own tune within the general theme.[8] Yet, a more accurate comparison for Putin and his clique might be the Wagner Group, nicknamed “musicians” in Russia.

Indeed, several key features distinguish Putinism from fascism. The latter included a socialist component and combined extreme nationalism with racism. Putinism rejects the socialist aspects present in fascism as well as the Soviet system, and despite its populism, it openly mocks egalitarian principles.

Most fascists were atheists and did not support religious messianism. And while Mussolini kept good relations with the Roman Catholic Church, the Nazi “Thousand-Year Reich” lacked any religious elements. In contrast, Orthodox messianism is crucial for the Kremlin, and the Russian Orthodox Church, along with its sects, plays a significant role in its politics.

The willingness to label Putinism as fascism is understandable: to recognize it as a criminal regime worldwide. But not all criminal regimes are necessarily fascist, and overstressing the similarities between Putinism and fascism might distract from the unique aspects of its criminality.

Does Putinism Have an Ideology?

The debates over the fascist nature of Putinism reinforce the belief that Putinism has an ideology. Twentieth-century ideologies had strong mobilizing power, and because Putin’s regime also shows this power, the argument is that it must be driven by ideology. However, Putinism manifestly defies the underlying principles of modern ideologies.

Even those who see Putinism as an ideology acknowledge that it lacks the abstract concepts and universal ideas typical of modern ideologies. Those ideologies, whether liberalism, communism, or fascism, offered their followers a master key that purported to explain life in its entirety. Putin’s regime lacks such a totalizing explanation and cannot be described as a theoretical system of any kind. Instead, the Kremlin manipulatively combines pieces of opposing ideological systems.[9]

No matter how many lies Soviet and fascist propaganda contained, there were certain fundamental ideological postulates they could not afford to violate. In contrast, chaotic inconsistency is an integral part of Putin’s propaganda. The Kremlin’s mouthpieces, like Vladimir Medinsky, openly claim that “there is no ‘absolute objectivity’ in history.”[10] The Kremlin has weaponized postmodernism and deconstruction: if people cannot act as rational subjects, the more confusion and contradictions they face, the easier they are to manipulate.[11]

The futurist aspect was central to Soviet and fascist ideologies. Both of them had a strong revolutionary drive.[12]While Marxism developed a more sophisticated theoretical system, fascists also proposed formulas aimed at creating their “perfect society.” They sought to test these formulas worldwide, which, from their subjects’ perspectives, validated their goal of world conquest. Yet, Putin’s regime is about the past, not the future.

Considering these differences, researchers have to use “generic” concepts such as imperialism, nationalism, conservatism, and anti-Westernism to describe Putinism as an ideology. Sometimes, even institutions and networks, such as the Russian World, are also considered aspects of Putin’s ideology. However, these features, typical of many authoritarian and neo-totalitarian regimes, hide rather than expose the specifics of Putinism.

The central role of the Russian Orthodox Church and its messianism in Putin’s propaganda is sometimes seen as a defining aspect of Russian ideology. However, the history of concepts demonstrates that the conditions under which a concept emerges and evolves set limits beyond which it loses its analytical capacity. Historically, the concept of ideology has been primarily applied to secular movements. If we expand the concept of ideology to include belief systems like religions and myths, we risk grouping too many and too diverse things under the same label. And we will almost certainly gain nothing by doing so.

Historical Memory and the Politics of Reversed Time

Remarkably, most of the evidence scholars use to support the view of Putinism as an ideology belongs to the realm of memory politics. The proponents of this view discuss the rapid growth of the budget for patriotic education, the creation of the Russian Historical Society, the development of pro-Kremlin history textbooks, including the textbook “Russian History” by Vladimir Medinsky (2023), and the opening of a multimedia historical parks “Russia – My History,” which showcase a pro-Kremlin version of Russian history, from ancient times to the present. The cult of “The Great Patriotic War” (WWII) is considered the core of this ideology. [13]

All these facts are aspects of Putin’s memory politics, which the Kremlin has been advancing since 2000. ‘memory politics,’ I mean the strategies employed by various memory actors to justify and promote their interpretations of the past. Memory politics influences how the past is evaluated and remembered. The post-Soviet cult of the war is an extreme example of the political instrumentalization of a historical event. It is worth noting that the concept of memory politics emerged in response to the memory boom of the 1970s and the decline of future-oriented ideologies.

Undeniably, the cult of “the Great Patriotic War” has been foundational for the regime since Putin took office in 2000. However, this does not mean that this cult and other historical myths constitute an ideology.

Historically, memory politics has overtaken and supplanted ideology in Russia under Putin. Several local and global factors contributed to this. An ideological void has haunted Putinism since its inception. Putin is no Lenin. He and his cronies came to power without any ideology. Embezzlement was their grand idea. Initially, Putin and his clique hoped that Orthodoxy would be enough to legitimize the regime in a multi-confessional country. However, the Church failed in its effort to fill the ideological vacuum left after the collapse of both Marxism and the pro-Western liberal ideology in the early 2000s. The acute need for legitimacy pushed Putin and his clique toward the instrumentalization of the Stalinist cult of the war.

Contrary to accusations that Russia started World War II by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, the war cult claims that the Soviet Union was a peacekeeper (notwithstanding its war against Finland, the fourth partition of Poland, and the annexation of Western Ukraine, Belarus, parts of Romania, and the Baltic countries from 1939 to 1940).

One of the war cult’s primary functions is to replace the memory of Soviet repressions with a sense of belonging in a heroic narrative, the patriotic struggle against Nazism. Another key function is to assert that the world owes Russia for saving it from fascism. Consequently, the argument goes, Russia has the exclusive right to reshape the global political order.

The war cult compensated for the absence of a clear ideology. It introduced a discourse to set Putinism apart from the failed democratic reforms of the 1990s. The war cult, which has consistently praised Stalin’s leadership as commander-in-chief, has triggered the politics of re-Stalinization —a major trend in Putin’s memory politics. Through several distorted historical episodes, this memory politics ushered in a positive reevaluation of Stalinism.

Putin’s reelection in March 2004 sparked an unprecedented mobilization of the far right, whose leaders inundated the presidential administration with pamphlets and projects. They advocated a return to the Middle Ages as a social and political goal for Russia, suggesting the restoration of the social structures of medieval Rus. Establishing a “new oprichnina,” a medieval state terror carried out by Ivan the Terrible in the mid-16th century, which they viewed as the best form of Russian governance, was central to their political vision. Stalinist repressions were seen as the re-emergence of this Russia’s sacred “eternal archetype.” They became foundational for the post-Soviet political neomedievalism. I use the term political neomedievalism to designate a growing global trend in far-right memory politics that alters representations of the medieval past to challenge the core principles of liberal democracy.

Around 2003-2004, political neomedievalism emerged as a new form of Kremlin memory politics. It had the same objectives as re-Stalinization. Glorifying Ivan the Terrible’s oprichnina and Stalin’s repressions, they promote state terror as a key part of the Russian national tradition. This double-edged memory politics justifies existing social inequalities and supports the reconstruction of the empire as Russia’s rightful goal. Nevertheless, there is no philosophy or theory, in other words, no ideology, that universalizes these social conditions or imperial politics.

Unlike memory politics, which has flourished in Russia, efforts to establish a consistent ideology have failed. Unsurprisingly, Vladislav Surkov’s 2006 concept of “sovereign democracy,” the most ambitious “theoretical” justification of Putinism, was soon officially discredited. [14] Medinsky’s “Fundamental Principles of State Cultural Policy” (2014), which called for “the development of a spiritual and cultural matrix for the nation, based on a single cultural and civilizational code,’”[15] was abridged and adopted in a version of a bureaucratic scribble.

In contrast to scholars of Putinism, Putinists themselves acknowledge that they cannot develop a new ideology. The National Security Strategy, updated on July 2, 2022, called for the development of “attractive ideological foundations of the future world order.” Alexander Dugin supported this by proposing the creation of “Putinism,” a “new ideology,” but he has yet to accomplish this task.[16] Additionally, the Russian Constitution, including its 2020 version, prohibits the establishment of a state ideology.

From a global standpoint, the Kremlin’s search for an ideology occurred during a period marked by the decline of ideologies, which may have also contributed to its failure. The radical change in the perception of historical time since the end of the 1980s challenged the view of time as an objective, irreversible flow from the past toward a bright future. The crisis of the future – the loss of futuristic optimism and the fear of catastrophe – compromised the belief in a better future.

Putin’s Russia presents an extreme case for observing how memory politics supplants ideology by trading the vision of the future for the vision of the past. Even proponents of the view that Putinism has an ideology agree that “The Kremlin’s ideology promises that the future will be better because it will resemble the past, and Russia will restore its lost status […].”[17] Actually, Gleb Pavlovsky, one of the leading political technologists and an engineer of Putinism, believed that after the collapse of traditional ideologies, “the politics of history will become the standard of politics as such.”[18]

Kremlin’s neomedieval memory politics forms a patchwork of fabricated examples from an artificial past, a collage of discrete and decontextualized historical events that are misconstrued for political ends. Much more flexible than any imaginable ideology, this memory politics is imprecise, suggestive, and simple, inviting all to picture themselves in the promised past. Reversing historical time, it erases the ideas of democracy and encourages Russians to see themselves as slavedrivers rather than slaves in the neomedieval Russian Empire.

A Criminal Regime of a New Kind?

Putinism employs unconventional methods to spread propaganda and rally the public. Comparing it to past models—such as fascism or Soviet communism—or relying on outdated concepts like ideology hampers our understanding of its true nature.

For the past 25 years, Putin’s regime has corrupted—partly intentionally, partly accidentally—Russian society, making people believe that the president who evades accountability for his involvement with the mafia, crime, corruption, violence, and assassinations, represents the pinnacle of social success. The regime has committed crimes openly. State terror and violence have been celebrated, along with their perpetrators. Gangsters, SMERSH, and the officers of Cheka, NKVD, KGB, and FSB are much-admired heroes of post-Soviet popular culture. Encouraging the worst in the population, Putinism has perverted not only social relationships but also family bonds. Russians send their sons and husbands to die in Ukraine in exchange for stolen Ukrainian belongings and money from the Russian government. Exactly like Putin reassured the mothers of fallen soldiers that it was good for their sons to die from something other than vodka.[19] The war against Ukraine turned into a profitable business not only for the Kremlin but also for millions of people who found new well-paid jobs in the war industry, which, by different estimates, represents today around a third of the Russian economy. The cynicism reigning in Russian society drastically reduces the need for a serious ideological system.

Joining those who claim that the age of ideology is over,[20] I argue that Putin’s regime clearly demonstrates how memory politics replace traditional, future-focused ideologies by substituting abstract theoretical discourses with decontextualized and distorted historical narratives. Political neomedievalism and re-Stalinization turn the repetition of the criminal past into the Russian regime’s only possible horizon.

Notes

[1] Alexander J. Motyl, “Is Putin’s Russia Fascist?” The National Interest, December 3, 2007: https://nationalinterest.org/commentary/inside-track-is-putins-russia-fascist-1888.

[2] Alexander Motyl, “Yes, Putin and Russia Are Fascist”, The Conversation, March 30,

2022, https://theconversation.com/yes-putin-and-russia-are-fascist-a-political-scientist-shows-how-they-meet-the-textbook-denition-179063.

[3] Timothy Snyder, “Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher of Russian Fascism,” The New York Review, 16 March, 2018, www.nybooks.com/online/2018/03/16/. Timothy Snyder, “We Should Say It: Russia Is Fascist,” The New York Times,May19, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/opinion/russia-fascism-ukraineputin.html.

[4] Stephen F. Cohen, “Who Putin Is Not: Falsely demonizing Russia’s leader has made the new Cold War even more dangerous,” The Nation, September 20, 2018. https://www.thenation.com/article/who-putin-is-not/. See also Isaac Chotiner, “Meet Vladimir Putin’s American apologist”, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116820/vladimir-putin-defended-american-leftist; Cathy Young, “Meet Stephen F. Cohen, Vladimir Putin’s best friend in the American media”, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/16/meet-stephen-f-cohen-vladimir-putin-s-best-friend-in-the-american-media.html;

[5] Marlene Laruelle, “So, Is Russia Fascist Now? Labels and Policy Implications,” The Washington Quarterly, 2022, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 149–168.

[6] Laruelle, “Illiberalism: A Conceptual Introduction”, East European Politics, 2022, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 303–327.

[7] Marlene Laruelle, Is Russia Fascist? Unraveling Propaganda East and West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021), 21.

[8] Laruelle, Is Russia Fascist?, 85.

[9] “Putin has long and successfully avoided adhering to an ideology, allowing him to maintain a degree of political intrigue around the key issues in Russian politics.” Nikita Savin, “Why Putinism Is (Still) Not An Ideology,” Re:Russia,October 12, 2023, https://rerussia.net/en/discussion/0102/.

[10] Vladimir Medinsky, “Interesnaya istoriya,” Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 4 July 2017.

[11] Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (New York: Public Affairs, 2014).

[12] On fascist ideology, see Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

[13] Maria Snegovaya, Michael Kimmage, Jade McGlynn, “Does the Putin Regime Have an Ideology?” Re:Russia,October 10, 2023. https://re-russia.net/en/discussion/0101/.

[14] Vladislav Surkov, “Natsionalizatsiya budushchego,” Ekspert, 2006, n.43, pp. 102-106.

[15] The updated 2023 version of the ‘Fundamentals’ is, in essence, Medinsky’s original version.” https://re-russia.net/en/discussion/0101/.

[16] Alexander Dugin,“Integral’nyi suverenitet,” Katekhon, July 4, 2022.

[17] Maria Snegovaya, Michael Kimmage, Jade McGlynn, “Does the Putin Regime Have an Ideology?” Re:Russia, October 10, 2023. https://re-russia.net/en/discussion/0101/.

[18] Gleb Pavlovskiy, “Plokho s pamyatyu – Plokho s politikoy,” Russkiy zhurnal, December 9, 2008: http://www.russ.ru/pole/Ploho-s-pamyat-yu-ploho-s-politikoj.

[19] “Vladimir Putin pogovoril s materyami rossiyskikh voyennykh,” Vedomosti, Novermber 26, 2022. https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2022/11/26/952246-putin-pogovoril-s-materyami

[20] Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Harvard University Press, 2000).

https://logosjournal.com/article/investigating-putinism-history-over-ideology/

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