Content area
Full text
A quarter-century after the demise of the Soviet regime, Russia again presents a powerful challenge to global liberalism and to the Western democratic community. Ambitious military modernization, aggression in the post-Soviet neighborhood, intervention in the Middle East, the construction of a global propaganda network, support for despots abroad, and brazen interference in elections in established democracies all point toward confrontation.
But these wide-ranging Russian policies also reflect a deeper evolution: As was the case in the Soviet Union before the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-91), Russia is again ruled by a self-confident elite that claims to represent a superior alternative to liberal democracy. And the confidence of Russia’s leaders has only increased as they witness the rise of politicians abroad-even in the United States-whose mentalities are consonant with their own.
How can we define the regime that Vladimir Putin and his associates embrace at home and trumpet abroad? Putinism is a form of autocracy that is conservative, populist, and personalistic. As such, it differs in key ways from developmentalist or otherwise transformative dictatorships, including the former Soviet party-state. It is conservative not only in its promotion, at home and abroad, of a traditionalist social agenda, but also per the term’s literal meaning: Putinism broadly prioritizes the maintenance of the status quo while evincing hostility toward potential sources of instability. And these tendencies are closely intertwined with Russia’s extractive, rent-driven economy. Putinism’s populism overlaps with its conservatism in the form of crowd-pleasing efforts to resist what Russian leaders cast as the advance of decadent liberalism on such issues as gay rights and women’s equality. Yet Putinism’s conservatism also constrains its use of other tools in the populist arsenal, such as reckless social spending. It also helps to explain an unusual feature of Putinist, as opposed to Western, populism: its stress on multiethnic and multiconfessional coexistence. Finally, as a personalist autocracy, Putinism rests on unrestricted one-man rule and the hollowing out of parties, institutions, and even individuals other than the president as independent political actors. But this close identification with one man may fatally undermine Putinism’s effectiveness in its self-appointed role as a bulwark against upheaval.
Conservatism
Putin’s regime is, first of all, conservative in the exact sense: It prioritizes defense of the status...