Intellectual Origins of Putinism as Russia’s State Ideology (original) (raw)

The Russian Collective Social Identity as a Platform for a Special System of Power: “Putinism”

2020

This article attempts to contextualize the reasons for the emergence and subsequent evolution of Putinism in contemporary Russia. The authors argue that Putinism as a system will definitely outlive Putin whose presidency expires in 2036, taking into account the changes to the Constitution made in 2020. The survival of Putinism will hinge upon an algorithm affected by a range of domestic factors. They include unconditional support of the current system and Putin as the President by the majority of Russia's populace, a tame and disciplined elite, as well as tight governmental control exercised over media, elites, and masses. The authors argue that the so-called "deep people" represent one among many Russian collective identities. The authors conclude that a current system obtains enough potential to see Putinism thrive long after Putin.

Putin's Political Philosophers: Neo-Orthodoxy, Identitarianism, and the Russian Federation

Russian Identitarian Philosophy and its Influence Upon Putin's Russian Federation, 2017

This paper explores the foundations, implications, and political consequences of Russian traditionalist philosophy, specifically addressing the history of Russian traditionalism, its influence upon the French nouvelle droite, and how these concepts are manifested within Putin's United Russia Party. Further, this paper will explore how these ideas are being populated within the European and American far right, enabling a more accurate measurement of Russian foreign policy activities and their intensity in the post-Soviet era.

Kiryukhin D., Shcherbak S. The People, Values, and the State: How Vladimir Putin’s Views on Ideology Evolved // Romanian Political Science Review. Studia Politica. – vol. XXII, no. 1 – 2022. – P.9-33

The main goal of this article is to analyze the evolution of Vladimir Putin’s understanding of the role of ideology in the Russian political system. This research, based on a discourse analysis of Putin’s addresses, articles, speeches, and interviews, allowed us to reconstruct the Russian President’s views on sovereignty, the Russian state, “the people” and their unity, and trace the emergence of Putinism as a specific ideology directed against the liberal world order. Our study demonstrates that Putin’s approach to ideology has undergone a difficult transformation from abandoning state ideology to its de facto revival. Giving ideology formal legal status by amending the Russian Constitution in 2020 was the logical conclusion of the evolution of Putin’s views. The public protests that swept through post-Soviet countries played a big role in this evolution because Putin perceived them as a threat to national sovereignty. This article shows that Putin’s pursuit of ideological policy serves two main goals: protecting Russia’s sovereignty, which involves not just building effective protection against external influence on Russia, but also reformatting the system of international relations so that the possibility of this influence can be eliminated and providing “national unity” and loyalty to the regime.

Nation-building in post-Soviet Russia: What kind of nationalism is produced by the Kremlin?

Journal of Eurasian Studies, 2010

After collapse and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, post-Soviet Russia faced typical problems of state-building and nation-building. Nations are assumed as political communities of Modernity. They are constructed in the process of nation-building and are based on nationalism, defined as worldview which perceives social reality through the prism of dividing the world into nations-states. Nation-building is a discursive process where state's activities predefine the type of nationalism being rooted. Using as a starting point ‘civic versus ethnic nationalism’ dichotomy, the article develops a transformed version of this typology, which is based on two dimensions: model of national membership (openness/closeness) and model of interaction among members (universalism/hierarchical particularism). The analysis of Annual Addresses of the Russian Presidents demonstrates that the Kremlin certainly produces open model of national membership. The key feature of ‘Russianness’ in th...

Nationalism and legitimation for authoritarianism: A comparison of Nicholas I and Vladimir Putin

Journal of Eurasian Studies, 2014

This article draws parallels between Tsar Nicholas I and current Russian President Vladimir Putin with respect to their use of nationalism to justify statist policies and political authoritarianism. Building upon insights by Alexander Gerschenkron about the economic development of "backwards" states, it argues that both Nicholas and Putin have rhetorically used Western concepts such as nationalism and democracy to legitimize their rule but have modified them to give them more statist content. Under Nicholas, this was exemplified in the tripartite (Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality) Official Nationality policy. Putin has emphasized patriotism, power, and statism to justify centralization of power and authoritarian policies. Putin's policies and rhetoric are strong analogs to those of Nicholas. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to explain state-inspired Russian nationalism and how it has been aligned with authoritarian politics, as well as specifying similarities between present and past in Russia.

Putinism beyond Putin: the political ideas of Nikolai Patrushev and Sergei Naryshkin in 2006–20

Post-Soviet Affairs, 2023

This essay adds to previous research of Putinism an investigation of the political thought and foreign outlooks of Russia’s Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev and Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergei Naryshkin, with a focus on their statements between 2006 to 2020. The paper outlines Patrushev’s and Naryshkin’s thoughts regarding the United States, Ukraine, and the idea of multipolarity/polycentrism. We then introduce Patrushev’s critique of liberal values and color revolutions, and Naryshkin’s statements on the memory of World War II and Western institutions. The salience of these altogether seven topics is interpreted with reference to three classical topoi in Russian political thought: the Slavophile vs. Westerners controversy, the single-stream theory, and the civilizational paradigm. Our conclusions inform the ongoing debate on whether to conceptualize Putinism as either an ideology or a mentality.

Russian Nationalism (chapter 2023)

Routledge Handbook of Russian Politics and Society, 2023

This chapter argues that nationalism remains a central force in Russian politics and society. Since the 1990s, expressions of Russian nationalism have both multiplied and come to focus heavily on ethnic issues. The chapter focuses on national projects shaped and carried out by a number of actors in accordance with their – often competing – visions of the Russian nation, including nation-building efforts by the state leadership. According to G. Hosking, the construction of an imperial state in Russia obstructed nation-building. Russian opposition nationalism can be visualised as a variety of circles that display varying degrees of loyalty to the Putin regime and to the Russian state. In parallel, new forms of Russian nationalism have emerged that are strenuously opposed to the Putin regime. While borrowing from the discourse of opposition nationalism and co-opting nationalist opinion-makers, the Kremlin has succeeded in disqualifying nationalists, let alone pro-democracy ones, preventing them from posing what could be a dangerous challenge to Putin’s rule.

State-led Nationalism in Today's Russia: Uniting the People with Conservative Values?

In recent years, the Russian state has been described as becoming "more nationalistic”. In the time period encompassing the Sochi Winter Olympics, the occupation of Crimea, the war in Donbas that continues to this day, air strikes in Syria, and the state seeking new legitimacy during the deepening economic crisis in Russia, many notions have been connected to growing nationalism. But nationalism as such is an ambiguous concept. Moreover, there is hardly any state in today’s global system that could be said to be totally devoid of nationalistic argumentation. Therefore, the way in which the Russian state leadership is using nationalism in order to achieve its political goals requires a critical empirical study. Authoritarianism, conservatism, and even imperialism have been discussed as "new” features of the Russian state. But the change in the self-understanding of the Russian state is not a result of one factor, such as strengthening national pride, but rather a wide range of ideas that have been reshuffled in relation to each other. This Working Paper focuses on the state-led nationalism in this changing ideational environment between the years 2012 and 2016, and how it has been received by the people. To this end, the Working Paper will argue that the ethnic-civic dimensions are insufficient in themselves to explain the nature of the contemporary state-led nationalism in Russia, as the official discourse both blurs these boundaries and creates new ones. President Vladimir Putin’s language simultaneously seeks acceptance by the majority of the people and control over embodiments of ethnic nationalisms. Hence, the state-led nationalism today leans on the narratives of a nation that has a history of a multinational country where ethnic Russians are still "first among equals”. For a long time, the Russian state has been shaping nationalism by portraying an image of a united nation, held together by commonly shared culture, history, language and values. These common denominators have remained the same, but the emphasis has varied. Today, the cultural unity of Russians extends beyond the state’s geographical and political borders, and the shared values are defined from above in a more restricted manner. The official discourse aims at distinguishing the Russian nation from other nations, but also at framing the right ways to be Russian: morals and patriotism are prerequisites for belonging to the nation. The conclusion of this paper is that despite being ethnically inclusive at the level of discourse, the contemporary Russian nationalism produced by the state leadership is exclusive in its demand for conservative, traditional values.

'Sovereign Democracy' and the Politics of Ideology in Putin's Russia

Russian Politics, 2020

The concept of sovereign democracy dominated the political discourse in Russia in 2006-8 but lost much of its significance since. In this article, I argue that sovereign democracy is best understood as the response of Russia's authorities to the threats of democratization, following Eurasian color revolutions. I distinguish between three conceptually distinct aspects of sovereign democracy: (1) a social contract (2) a legitimation discourse; and (3) a counter-revolutionary praxis. These dimensions allow us to understand what functions sovereign democracy fulfilled within the framework of Russia's authoritarian regime and why it lost its prominence over time.