Dissecting Putin’s Regime Ideology

• In Event: The Evolution of the Putin Regime's Ideology

Abstract

Does the Putin regime have an ideology? This question has attracted renewed attention since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Some scholars claim that the war is directly linked to Putin regime’s ideological aspirations to restore Russia’s greatness and challenge the West internationally, whilst others argue that contemporary regimes in the ‘Putinist mold’ have limited need for ideology and use wars instrumentally for survival purposes rather than messianic aspirations. This paper will explore this question in application to contemporary Russia. Firstly, we will review arguments pro and contra the ideology under the Putin regime and identify existing gaps in such literature: definitional ambiguity, conflation of concepts of totalitarianism and ideology, overfocusing on ideal types of ideology and so forth. Secondly, we will rely on this literature to identify the metrics against which the ideology is measured: coherence of ideological repertoire, elite commitment, codification, indoctrination, internalization and futuristic vision. This paper will find that the current Putin regime checks most of the ideological boxes (even if it has not necessarily always been the case historically). Lastly, we will conclude by discussing the implications of our findings to analysis of contemporary autocracies.

Author

• Maria Snegovaya, Johns Hopkins U