Today, we are living in an updated version of the dark times first perceived by German poet Bertolt Brecht and best described by German philosopher Hannah Arendt. These new dark times, in which ordinary citizens fail to illuminate the wrongdoing—or do-gooding—of civilization and its leaders and hence allow for lies to degrade truth and human dignity,1 are defined by the current age of Bashar al-Assad ’s genocidal Syrian regime, of Poland’s Law and Justice, of Marine Le Pen’s National Front, of Viktor Orbán ’s Hungary, of Nicolás Maduro ’s Venezuela, of Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua, of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and of Donald Trump ’s America. The list of what Arendt and other defenders of liberty would condemn as threats to a healthy and free society rattles on; worst of all, it only appears to be growing, as more and more populations across the world vote for exclusionary parties whose policies would result in economic disaster, isolationism, press censorship, and other impediments to the best interests of diversity, plurality, liberty, and human rights.
Under such precarious conditions, it is imperative for scholars, policymakers, and voters alike to examine how it is possible for any political leader to command extensive control over a supposedly democratic nation-state. It is especially important to understand power dynamics when a leader’s power is granted mostly on the basis of popularity, rather than dragooned by force. Vladimir Putin’s Russia presents a prime source of research on this paradox. On a basic level, this is because Putin’s name is plastered in newspapers and magazines across the globe on a daily basis. Most importantly, however, this is because Putin, as the leader of the Russian nation-state, has come to embody a genuine ideological movement that erodes faith in liberal values of democracy and the public on a scale unmatched in other states as of 2019. Putin’s Russia is arguably the most active perpetuator and exponent of these new dark times—not only because of its physical body count and its moral body count, but also because of its audacious, genocidal-utopian ideology, as conceived of by the Russian government and people.
While a plethora of scholars and books2 have been published in recent years to provide insight as to the enigma that Putin the man is, little analysis exists of the Russian population’s behaviors or their history as forces themselves. The bulk of such research—conducted by scholars including Ian McAllister, Richard Sakwa, and Stephen White—centers only on Putin and portrays him as little more than a disproportionately powerful opportunist seeking as much money and glory for himself (and, by extension, Russia) as he possibly can. This approach is perilous because it pays no heed to the issue of the population’s complicity or desire for an authoritarian leader. It neglects the Russian people’s reactions, thereby providing a misleading portrait of Russia that wrongfully situates Putin outside of the Russian tradition.
And the few accounts in existence that actually do incorporate Russian society into their analyses of Putin the president and Russia the country are just as delusory. As insightful as writers and dissidents such as Ben Judah, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Richard Lourie, and Lilia Shevtsova are, their recent works—not without a certain indulgence in wishful thinking—assume that the tiny percentage of Russians bothered by rampant corruption will eventually destroy him, or at least his style of rule. They thus argue that Putin’s system must be unstable and decaying3; however, they fail to ascertain the ideological aspect of Putin’s rule or the historical depths of authoritarianism, nationalism, and imperialism that have culminated in Putin’s reign over a largely submissive population of almost 144 million for nearly two decades.
The aforementioned perspectives, with their primary focus on Putin as an individual, either directly or indirectly refer to Putin’s success and control over Russia as “the Putin Phenomenon.” It is a phrase that focuses Putin the man as the nation’s steering force.4 To comprehend its meaning and usefulness as a framework, though, one must consider its predecessor, the term from which it is essentially adapted: “the Gorbachev Phenomenon.” This concept has been famously wrangled by the late scholar of Soviet and Russian history Moshe Lewin in his book The Gorbachev Phenomenon: A Historical Interpretation (1988).
The Gorbachev Phenomenon explored the potential reasons for the Soviet government’s announcements of drastic policy and attitude shifts in the 1980s (namely, perestroika and glasnost). It subverted the basic impression of “the Gorbachev Phenomenon” by asking: could the final Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s personality as a leader really be the catalyst for change, as many onlookers at the time believed, or were ailments such as an untenable economic situation, a newly emerging civil society soon to burst on the scene under the weight of seven decades of repression, a wasteful bureaucracy, and others responsible? Moreover, were these changes genuine, and would they last?
Lewin ’s book was crucial in 1988—and is still crucial now—because it approached a society’s functioning as a study of change from the few elites above versus change from the many civilians below. Ultimately, it contended that societal trends heavily influenced change in the Soviet system, and that Gorbachev himself should not be given all the credit.5 The same sentiment needs to be applied to Vladimir Putin as well, if we are going to understand how he could be so popular for so long, and to understand why the Russian population (in addition to a growing number of illiberal, antidemocratic groups across the globe) clings to the Putinist style.
The “Putin Phenomenon,” then, usually points to Putin’s alleged personal strengths to explain the otherwise baffling nature of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s rise to power. Since the little-known ex-KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, or Committee for State Security) agent and otherwise ordinary man was first drafted by oligarchs onto Russia’s national stage in 1999 as acting prime minister with popularity ratings of 2 percent, he has been elected (albeit with varying degrees of fraud) to the Presidential Office of the Russian Federation four times and enjoys approval rates typically upward of 70 percent and even 80 percent.6 This phenomenon does, indeed, beg analysis. It has enabled Putin to dominate the Russian political scene for nearly two decades and capture international attention to the point where news anchors and journalists across the globe spend hours each day debating his motivations and intentions.
But examinations of Putin’s advantageously amorphous and deliberately elusive personality alone cannot fully explain the “Putin Phenomenon” or his profoundly effective role as head of state. As insightful as these excellent texts are, they fail to explain the cultural and ideological reasons culminating in the cult of personality built around Vladimir Putin and in the imperial myth that has swollen around the idea of Russia for centuries. As of 2019, our task is not to ask the single question of “How has Putin clung to power for so long?” We must now consider two related questions: why have the masses clung to Putin for so long, and how does ideology factor into Russia’s current society? Simply put: why do Russians support Putin?
Debunking the “Putin Phenomenon” and Recentering Putinism
Our book diverges from the old mold and the old question. It considers Putin himself as an ideological vessel shaped by a set of cultural beliefs that belong to a deeply rooted Russian milieu, evincing the reality that Russia’s problems are not limited to Putin’s leadership. We disagree with the typical approach associated with the “Putin Phenomenon” and generally prefer to utilize the term “Putinism” in our work. Rather than focus on Putin the man and his rise from obscurity, we decenter him, remove him from the central place on the historical stage, and instead focus on public reaction, societal mobilization, and historical trends to which Putin himself succumbs. We make this decision because, over time, Putinism has become most remarkable for how Russian citizens consistently offer their approval of Putin even while he restricts their freedoms, stagnates their economy, and sends their friends and loved ones in the military to potentially sacrifice their lives for unnecessary international aggressions. In other words, we find the cultural and societal elements surrounding Putin’s success to be more intriguing than his actual achievements or personality.
Contrary to the Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza’s optimistic opinion that “Putin is not Russia,”7 we firmly state that Putin is, in fact, representative of Russia. This is partly due to Putin’s status as a product of Russian history and society, and partly due to his status as someone who has tapped into a widespread, populist desire for nationalist glory over humility. Crucially, this revelation signifies that simply removing Putin from office will not be enough to guarantee Russia’s freedom. Russians do not believe in Putin alone: they believe in a wider ideology that he happens to share and embody himself. Putin’s rule is conditional and will end with his death (or removal from all seats of power, although such a scenario is hard to envision); the criminal and/or aggressive actions conducted by the Russian state at Putin’s request, on the other hand, are something the Russian population will most likely continue to favor, whether they live under Putin or the next leader of whom they can approve.
Likewise, we disagree with Russian political scientist Lilia Shevtsova’s conviction that Putin heads a “half-baked despotic regime” that runs off of a fear-inducing personalized power system but cannot possibly rule Russia forever.8 While Shevtsova is correct in her assertions that Putin will not always be in power (we can, after all, say with a fair degree of confidence that Putin himself will not find the Fountain of Youth, and that the year 2100 will not see him as Russia’s ruler) and that fear plays a key role in silencing alternative modes of thought, she misses the meaning of Putinism. It is not just the work of a “half-baked” leader or, for that matter, group of leaders. The despotic regime to which Shevtsova refers is rooted in a cultural trend that (1) will succeed as long as society lets it, and (2) begins before Putin and will last beyond Putin.
This is not to disparage the majority of previous research conducted on Putin’s Russia or all the other products of outspoken critics like Kara-Murza and Shevtsova. Putin’s advent to power and his desires are, of course, crucial to understanding today’s Russian society. Yet, without comprehension of the cultural practices behind Putin, those studies could never properly analyze Russian society or determine how best to liberate it. Take the issue of Putin’s enormous wealth, for example. Despite Russia’s rough economic situation, Putin is speculated to be one of the richest people in the world, if not the richest. His financial worth is valued somewhere between $40 billion and $200 billion,9 but while some Americans condemn Donald Trump solely on the basis that he did not release his tax returns, the Russian media and the Russian population hardly ever mention Putin’s exorbitant and likely ill-gotten riches as an issue.
Examinations into p...