Politics
‘Trying to Convince the Rest of the World that Putin is Right About Everything, not just Ukraine’
September 23, 2024
Ilya Budraitskis
Political scientist, visiting researcher at the University of California, Berkeley- Maria PopovaIndependent researcher
In an interview with independent researcher Maria Popova, political scientist Ilya Budraitskis discusses the origins and evolution of the ideology underpinning the political regime in Putin’s Russia.
Why does the authoritarian regime in Russia need political philosophy? What is its role in the everyday practice of decision-making?
I think the regime needs elements of intellectual constructs that are perceived as self-evident and just serve to affirm what the Russian elite already thinks. For example, the theory that the West has wanted to destroy Russia for centuries corresponds to intuitions that they have learned from life, not from books.
What are these truths of life? Whosever values prove superior in this struggle, that is the victor. If you want to dominate, strike [your opponent] first. Your ethos must be stronger than your opponent’s. Even from Putin’s biography, you can see that he learned all these moral lessons in fights in his youth, the KGB school and the gangster conflicts of the 1990s.
I think the regime needs elements of intellectual constructs that are perceived as self-evident and just serve to affirm what the Russian elite already thinks. For example, the theory that the West has wanted to destroy Russia for centuries corresponds to intuitions that they have learned from life, not from books.
What are these truths of life? Whosever values prove superior in this struggle, that is the victor. If you want to dominate, strike [your opponent] first. Your ethos must be stronger than your opponent’s. Even from Putin’s biography, you can see that he learned all these moral lessons in fights in his youth, the KGB school and the gangster conflicts of the 1990s.
Alexander Dugin, a Russian political philosopher, is broadly believed to influence the Kremlin's ideology. Source: Wiki Commons
These self-evident truths are then affirmed by the works of philosophers such as Ivan Ilyin. In this philosophy, of course, they read and take only the elements that fit their understanding of the situation. There is nothing unique here, as ideology always works like this. There are intellectual constructs and theories, and there is the practice of the groups that are in power.
I do not think there is anything particularly cynical or postmodernist about this, or different from the way other political regimes deal with ideology. Ideology does not have to be internally coherent or consistent for it to work, but it looks exactly like that in the minds of the people who profess it.
Many are now discussing how Putin’s conceptual framework and historical thinking shaped the current regime in Russia. Are these theoretical constructs simply a convenient basis for justifying political actions? What came first – the “Russian world” in the minds of the political elite or the conceptual framework it entails?
The process goes both ways. On the one hand, there were already ideas about which direction the state should go. Alexander Dugin and Andrei Fursov were already talking 15 years ago about the need for new repressions and a break with democratic legitimacy, with Putin proclaimed tsar. These authors were in the Kremlin’s orbit, read by people from the security services and Presidential Administration.
I do not think there is anything particularly cynical or postmodernist about this, or different from the way other political regimes deal with ideology. Ideology does not have to be internally coherent or consistent for it to work, but it looks exactly like that in the minds of the people who profess it.
Many are now discussing how Putin’s conceptual framework and historical thinking shaped the current regime in Russia. Are these theoretical constructs simply a convenient basis for justifying political actions? What came first – the “Russian world” in the minds of the political elite or the conceptual framework it entails?
The process goes both ways. On the one hand, there were already ideas about which direction the state should go. Alexander Dugin and Andrei Fursov were already talking 15 years ago about the need for new repressions and a break with democratic legitimacy, with Putin proclaimed tsar. These authors were in the Kremlin’s orbit, read by people from the security services and Presidential Administration.
“At the same time, politics never stopped and convinced Putin and the ruling elite that the West would not allow them to prolong their political system and that they must address that threat proactively.”
Trying to please the West and play by its rules was useless, and from then on, they would defend national interests as they understood them: as perfectly coinciding with their own interests, the interests of their group and their political regime.
For a long time, the prevailing view in scholarly discussions was that there was no ideology in Russia; now, it is almost beyond doubt that the current regime has an ideology. What is your view?
When I talk about the ideologization of the regime, I mean that its actions are completely determined by an ideological worldview, and it is impossible to have a situation where you accommodate the interest of another [actor] when it does not correspond to your ideas, even though you see that it is real. Say, America has misguided spiritual values, but it has nuclear weapons. To avoid a direct clash, which is not in line with your interests, you must recognize the relativity of your own beliefs.
What is going on now in Putin’s Russia shows that the leadership has no realistic framework and is trying to convince the rest of the world that Putin is right about everything, not just about the specific issue of Ukraine’s borders.
In the scholarly literature, the Russian regime has indeed been analyzed for a long time as cynical and pragmatic, without an ideology, but where rhetoric is used instrumentally, where only interests decide everything. Now, it is obvious that is not so.
For a long time, the prevailing view in scholarly discussions was that there was no ideology in Russia; now, it is almost beyond doubt that the current regime has an ideology. What is your view?
When I talk about the ideologization of the regime, I mean that its actions are completely determined by an ideological worldview, and it is impossible to have a situation where you accommodate the interest of another [actor] when it does not correspond to your ideas, even though you see that it is real. Say, America has misguided spiritual values, but it has nuclear weapons. To avoid a direct clash, which is not in line with your interests, you must recognize the relativity of your own beliefs.
What is going on now in Putin’s Russia shows that the leadership has no realistic framework and is trying to convince the rest of the world that Putin is right about everything, not just about the specific issue of Ukraine’s borders.
In the scholarly literature, the Russian regime has indeed been analyzed for a long time as cynical and pragmatic, without an ideology, but where rhetoric is used instrumentally, where only interests decide everything. Now, it is obvious that is not so.
“People who had long been considered cynics and pragmatists are now making the most messianic speeches, backed up by serious military threats.”
It is unclear how these people acquired a coherent ideology. What happened? Modern political science has been unable to understand the shift from one situation to another.
All discussions about Putin’s ideology have a methodological problem stemming from how the concept of “ideology” is understood. The definition of ideology as a holistic system of views has been blindly taken from books on political theory. Scholars are trying to reconstruct this system of views, with some concluding that there is nothing holistic – only postmodernism and an ideological market – and others, having reread everything from Dugin, Zinoviev and Gumilev, concluding that there is a holistic system, claiming to have found its basis.
But ideology is not a spiritual superstructure on top of material circumstances. It is what organizes those material circumstances, working on the level of the everyday. Ideology is how we see society, what guides our decisions, meaning every person has an ideology; it is not necessarily pulled out of books.
In a certain sense, everyone is an intellectual, since everyone has an idea of the world around him and his place in it. On the one hand, it is based on his life experience and, on the other, takes the form of the images, ideas and concepts that are conventional and most widespread in society.
Ilya Matveyev and I are working on a book on the causes of the Russia-Ukraine war, trying to address these methodological problems. Starting the war was an ideologically motivated decision. It is impossible to explain rationally what happened in 2014 and 2022 as realism in international relations. The decision to intervene militarily in Ukraine was rational, but in its own special way of looking at the world. [We address] the question of how Russia went from cynicism to ideology through a more complex theoretical understanding of what ideology is and how it works.
If it was not ideology, then what shaped Putin and his entourage? What is this material reality?
Material reality is the reality that accompanied Putin and his group throughout their lives, namely the late-Soviet semi-criminal world combined with the ideology of the security services. The answers to the basic anthropological questions of what a human being is and what his nature is had already crystallized in the heads of these people in the 1980s.
Subsequent intellectual influences were embraced because they affirmed this anthropological framework internalized from [the days of] gangster capitalism.
All discussions about Putin’s ideology have a methodological problem stemming from how the concept of “ideology” is understood. The definition of ideology as a holistic system of views has been blindly taken from books on political theory. Scholars are trying to reconstruct this system of views, with some concluding that there is nothing holistic – only postmodernism and an ideological market – and others, having reread everything from Dugin, Zinoviev and Gumilev, concluding that there is a holistic system, claiming to have found its basis.
But ideology is not a spiritual superstructure on top of material circumstances. It is what organizes those material circumstances, working on the level of the everyday. Ideology is how we see society, what guides our decisions, meaning every person has an ideology; it is not necessarily pulled out of books.
In a certain sense, everyone is an intellectual, since everyone has an idea of the world around him and his place in it. On the one hand, it is based on his life experience and, on the other, takes the form of the images, ideas and concepts that are conventional and most widespread in society.
Ilya Matveyev and I are working on a book on the causes of the Russia-Ukraine war, trying to address these methodological problems. Starting the war was an ideologically motivated decision. It is impossible to explain rationally what happened in 2014 and 2022 as realism in international relations. The decision to intervene militarily in Ukraine was rational, but in its own special way of looking at the world. [We address] the question of how Russia went from cynicism to ideology through a more complex theoretical understanding of what ideology is and how it works.
If it was not ideology, then what shaped Putin and his entourage? What is this material reality?
Material reality is the reality that accompanied Putin and his group throughout their lives, namely the late-Soviet semi-criminal world combined with the ideology of the security services. The answers to the basic anthropological questions of what a human being is and what his nature is had already crystallized in the heads of these people in the 1980s.
Subsequent intellectual influences were embraced because they affirmed this anthropological framework internalized from [the days of] gangster capitalism.
“In addition, the experience of the 1990s, with the original accumulation of capital in Russia and the redistribution of property, is fundamentally important for the Putin elite.”
It gave them a market-based understanding of human nature, as a war of all against all. At the heart of such a worldview is the perception of life as a struggle for interests.
In one of your articles, you write that “today’s fascist moment differs from classical fascism in its complete absence of a utopian horizon, even a reactionary one.” Why do the authorities not want to imagine a future?
Who is now offering a clear vision of the future? No one! There is a temporality common to humanity today, not just to Russia. Any discourse about the future now sounds lame, which keeps it out of the public eye.
In this sense, Putin corresponds to the general temporality of the pure present and the rejection of a vision of the future. Of course, his regime itself is built in such a way that any conversation about the future of Russia is scary and unsettling. Because if there is no Putin, there is no Russia, as the well-known axiom [of Vyacheslav Volodin, then first deputy head of the Presidential Administration,] goes.
In one of your articles, you write that “today’s fascist moment differs from classical fascism in its complete absence of a utopian horizon, even a reactionary one.” Why do the authorities not want to imagine a future?
Who is now offering a clear vision of the future? No one! There is a temporality common to humanity today, not just to Russia. Any discourse about the future now sounds lame, which keeps it out of the public eye.
In this sense, Putin corresponds to the general temporality of the pure present and the rejection of a vision of the future. Of course, his regime itself is built in such a way that any conversation about the future of Russia is scary and unsettling. Because if there is no Putin, there is no Russia, as the well-known axiom [of Vyacheslav Volodin, then first deputy head of the Presidential Administration,] goes.
Many in Russia get on with their lives, as if there's no war and no tomorrow. Source: VK
The outlook for the whole country and its people is uncertain. Since everyone understands this, there is a desperate desire to cling to today, not to think about what will happen tomorrow. Because the future is more foreboding than hopeful.
In a 2021 interview, reflecting on Dugin, you said that Putin was not ready to fully adopt anti-modernist positions. What do you think ended up triggering his radicalization?
In 2021, preparations for the invasion of Ukraine were in full swing. That summer, Putin wrote an article on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians, and probably by that time the decision had already been made – in violation of international law – to undertake this military operation.
I think Putin saw the invasion as a military-political operation aimed at regime change. That is why his article was addressed to the people of Ukraine. He believed that the version of history presented in it coincided with the intuitive feeling of most Ukrainians, who, unfortunately, [he reasoned,] are ruled by an illegitimate, Nazi regime that must be overthrown.
In a 2021 interview, reflecting on Dugin, you said that Putin was not ready to fully adopt anti-modernist positions. What do you think ended up triggering his radicalization?
In 2021, preparations for the invasion of Ukraine were in full swing. That summer, Putin wrote an article on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians, and probably by that time the decision had already been made – in violation of international law – to undertake this military operation.
I think Putin saw the invasion as a military-political operation aimed at regime change. That is why his article was addressed to the people of Ukraine. He believed that the version of history presented in it coincided with the intuitive feeling of most Ukrainians, who, unfortunately, [he reasoned,] are ruled by an illegitimate, Nazi regime that must be overthrown.
“When the ‘operation’ turned into a war, which happened rather quickly, the radicalization scenario was fully accepted.”
In a broad sense, the turn to ideologization took place in 2011-12, when, having suppressed the protests, Putin returned for a third term. He returned with the belief that the protests were organized abroad. It does not matter what American or European officials say publicly; it is their essence that matters. Essentially, they want the same thing as Hitler, Napoleon and the knights at the Battle of the Ice: to dismember Russia and destroy its values, with Putin’s rule the only guarantee of the country’s preservation. It was then that the conservative ideas, used instrumentally by the regime in its rhetoric and gradually absorbed, finally coincided with the understanding of reality in the Kremlin.
Looking ahead, how do you think it will be best to reflect on the processes going on in today’s Russia, for the country to begin to work through the collective trauma?
Collective trauma processing usually takes a long time. It does not happen immediately amid a shift in the political situation, meaning there is no need to specially put forward such a task during the transition from Putinism.
I think the baseline at this point would be a policy of turning the page, like in Germany after World War II. The group of criminals who embroiled the country in a terrible disaster must be punished. In Russia, it is the group that was on display at the Security Council meeting on the first day of the full-scale invasion. We, the rest of the country, turn the page and simply begin to live a different life amid a different political situation. Addressing trauma, trying to work through it and understand it – this happens after life in that new environment has settled down, and a new generation has grown up with it.
Looking ahead, how do you think it will be best to reflect on the processes going on in today’s Russia, for the country to begin to work through the collective trauma?
Collective trauma processing usually takes a long time. It does not happen immediately amid a shift in the political situation, meaning there is no need to specially put forward such a task during the transition from Putinism.
I think the baseline at this point would be a policy of turning the page, like in Germany after World War II. The group of criminals who embroiled the country in a terrible disaster must be punished. In Russia, it is the group that was on display at the Security Council meeting on the first day of the full-scale invasion. We, the rest of the country, turn the page and simply begin to live a different life amid a different political situation. Addressing trauma, trying to work through it and understand it – this happens after life in that new environment has settled down, and a new generation has grown up with it.
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