Why do we compare Putinism with the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century?
Last week, Andreas Umland, analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS), published his article “Is Putinism Fascism by another name?” in the Ukrainian Pravda.
Undoubtedly, this is a very important publication from the point of view of the need to support this discourse in Ukrainian and international expert, political, and public circles. It is also important because providing a definition of the current political regime in the Russian Federation is necessary not only, and not so much from the point of view of propaganda, but also due to the fact that the definition helps to form a holistic understanding of what Ukraine and the democratic world are struggling with today, puts this “something” in its place in history and forms, along with understanding, an adequate perception of Russia. Without this, in turn, it is impossible to set the limits of sufficient responsibility for crimes against the Ukrainian people, as well as to name the subject of this responsibility (Putin, Russian elites, or the Russian people as a whole?)
A. Umland did not come to a final conclusion in his article whether the Putin regime is a fascist regime. However, it seems that the author did not set himself such a goal. He remained on the position of dispassionate objective scientific analysis.
It is truly impossible to come to an unambiguous conclusion if you try to compare modern Russia and its political regime with historical analogies – the fascist Italy of Benito Mussolini’s regime, or the Nazi Germany of Adolf Hitler. That is why Ukraine went the other way – giving the political regime in Russia the name “Ruscism” and forming its state position with the parliamentary Resolution of May 2, 2023 “On the Statement of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine “On the use of the ideology of Ruscism by the political regime of the Russian Federation, condemnation of the principles and practices of Ruscism as totalitarian and misanthropic” (the author of this article was among co-authors of the Resolution and the explanatory note to it ).
It is a mistake to perceive Ukraine’s use of the term of “Ruscism” as an exclusively emotional desire of a wounded people to brand their enemy with a name similar to that well-known in our historical context – “Fascism” (in its incorrect use as a substitute for Nazism – as Umland rightly notes). The Ukrainian parliament made its decision not being guided by simple propaganda logic. Such a perception would be an unworthy primitivism.
The introduction of the term of “Ruscism” is a step in the direction of history in which we quite reasonably put modern Russia and Putinism on a par with other totalitarian regimes.
Ruscism is not “the same”. It is “one of the list” of misanthropic regimes of modern history.
The regimes that fall into this list have both common and unique features. Just as Hitler’s Nazism had a similar nature and, at the same time, differed from Mussolini’s Fascism, ruscism has a standard list of features inherent in such political regimes, as well as its own national and historical specificity conditioned by a different time and circumstances (economic, political, informational).
• If we talk about commonality I would like to refer the reader to part four “Ordinary Ruscism” of Section II of the ITPE monograph “Pretend Russia: Imitation of Greatness and Power”, where, in particular, common features of totalitarian regimes according to the definitions of Lawrence Britt, Umberto Eco, Karl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski were collected. Based on the analysis of these definitions, the following specific features of totalitarian regimes and ideologies that accompany them (or form them – here we have a debatable question of what precedes what) were identified. Namely:
• antihumanism
• messianism
• antagonicity
• ideological monism
• primacy of the state and equation of the state and the people
• leaderism
• ubiquity
• historicism (the concept of “revival of greatness”)
• mythicalness and utopianism
• concept of “creation of a new human”.
All these ten out of ten features are inherent in the current political regime in Russia, which is also discussed in the said publication of the Institute of Political Science and Technology.
The most debatable issue today is the presence of a totalitarian ideology in Russia. Most experts believe that such a state ideological concept has not developed in the Russian Federation, so we can only talk about practices similar to those of totalitarian regimes in Europe of the 20th century, but not the identity of the said Fascism or Nazism.
In this context, it is very important to understand that we are dealing with a phenomenon that is developing in our time continuum. Ruscism is being formed before our eyes (under the influence of internal and external circumstances) into a totalitarian regime with its own ideology. And it does so quite quickly. This can be seen, in particular, in the 2023 statements of Konstantin Chuichenko, the Russian Federation’s Minister of Justice, and Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation and Putin’s friend, about the need to amend the Constitution of the Russian Federation to define “national ideology”. As lawyers, they actually voiced the desire of the Russian elites to enshrine in legislation what already exists – namely, the state ideological (worldview) concept, which the Kremlin has long and openly used to define and explain its domestic and foreign policy.
In other words: if “something” is spoken about but not named – it does not follow that this “something” (in our case – totalitarian ideology) does not exist. If Ruscism (or Putinism, as A. Umland refers to it in the title of the article) is not absolutely identical to Fascism or Nazism – it does not follow that it “does not deserve” a place in the list of totalitarian political regimes.