Putin’s Totalitarian Democracy : Ideology, Myth, and Violence in the Twenty-First Century

This book studies the cultural, societal, and ideological factors absent from popular discourse on Vladimir Putin's Russia, contesting the misleading mainstream assumption that Putin is the all-powerful sovereign of Russia. In carefully examining the ideological underpinnings of Putinism-its tsarist and Soviet elements, its intellectual origins, its culturally reproductive nature, and its imperialist foreign policy-the authors reveal that an indoctrinating ideology and a willing population are simultaneously the most crucial yet overlooked keys to analyzing Putin's totalitarian democracy. Because Putinism is part of a global wave of extreme political movements, the book also reaffirms the need to understand-but not accept-how and why nation-states and masses turn to nationalism, authoritarianism, or totalitarianism in modern times. Kate C. Langdon is an Erasmus Mundus scholar. She studied at Vassar College in New York and Charles University in Prague. Vladimir Tismaneanu is Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, USA. Dedication Acknowledgments Contents About the Authors Chapter 1: Recentering Putinism Debunking the “Putin Phenomenon” and Recentering Putinism Challenges to Putinism and the Survival of Historical Trends Brief Chapter Outline References Chapter 2: The Inheritance of an Autocratic Legend The Basis of Tsarist Rule: Absolute Power in Exchange for Border Protection Leninism Continues the Autocratic Legacy The Ghost of Autocracy Haunts Modern Russia References Chapter 3: Enter “the Hero” The Dresden Connection After the Soviet Fall Apartment Bombings and the Need for a National Savior War as a Distracting and Mobilizing Force Recognizing the Need for the People’s Approval Shaking the Unshakeable: Crises of the Economy and Legitimacy References Chapter 4: The Intellectual Origins of Putinism What Is Ideology? Ideology and Blurring: The Progression into Totalitarianism Intellectual Origins of Putinism and Beyond Putin the Opportunist, or Putin the Believer? References Chapter 5: Putinism as a Culture in the Making The Security Imaginary: A Domestic Tool for Defining the Russian National Identity Nostalgia for the Soviet Paradise A One-Sided State of Perpetual War Russia as a Victim Rewriting History Around Russian Exceptionalism Russia as the Superior Culture Biopolitics and Racism: Self-Other Distinctions and Identity Putinism and the Specter of Homo Sovieticus References Chapter 6: Russian Nationalism in Education, the Media, and Religion Ideology and Youth Education in Russia Ideology and the Media in Russia Ideology and Religion in Russia How Individuals Reproduce the Kremlin’s Ideology References Chapter 7: Russian Foreign Policy: Freedom for Whom, to Do What? Putin’s Foreign Policy, the “Near Abroad,” and Beyond The Case of Ukraine and Expanding Biopolitics The Case of Syria and Exaggerating Russia’s Role in Global Anti-Terrorism Foreign Policy and the Internal Policing of the Enemy References Chapter 8: The New Dark Times References Index