Putin and Putinist government in Russia: Comments on Robert Misik book on Vladimir Putin

Austrian political analyst Robert Misik has published a book on Russia’s President, Putin.Ein Verhängnis [Putin: A Fate] (2022).

This year is already generally regarded as a turning point in European and world politics because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24. So lots of people are re-evaluating their understanding of what we think we know about Russia.

Misik relies on a variety of solid secondary sources and makes good use of them. Most of those he sites are English-language ones. His analysis of Putin’s ideological/propaganda positions is particularly interesting. But he doesn’t fall into the trap of assuming that Putin is particularly driven by ideology.

Putinist ideology?

Western commentators are quick to assume a similarity between Putin and leaders of the old Soviet Union. But when it comes to ideological positions, there is an important difference. Soviet leaders from Lenin to Gorbachev were expected to offer treatises on political and philosophical questions and even literature and art. Stalin in 1950 published a book on linguistics. However one views the various brands of Marxist theory elaborated by Soviet leaders, the expectation was that they provide a theoretical framework for their views.

This is not the case for the leaders of Russia since 1991: Boris Yeltsin, Dmitry Medvedev, and Vladimir Putin. Of course, every government has to provide a narrative framework for itself and the public. Misik discusses a couple of theorists who influenced the far-right, post-1991 Russian context. Ivan Ilyin (1883–1954) is one of them. One of Misik’s cited sources, Anton Barbashin (Ivan Ilyin: A Fashionable Fascist Riddle 04/20/2018) wrote that the Russia “state has been promoting [Ilyin] for the last 15 years as a genuine Russian philosopher, exemplary statist and true Russian patriot.” Ilyin was an overt fascist, a frank admirer of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. But he also promoted a notion of a deep, somehow special Russian religious spirituality, which seems similar to the brand of Russia Orthodox Christian piety Putin has promoted.

One Viennese touch that Misik includes is that Ilyin prior to the First World War was an admirer of Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychological repression. He notes, ‘“It is highly probable that Ilyin came to Freud [in Vienna] for psychological sessions over six weeks.” in Vienna. He adds that Ilyin and his wife Natali Vokach were “pioneers of the psychoanalytic movement in Russia.” Presumably Ilyin’s admiration for the Jewish and definitely anti-fascist physician Freud diminished in his later years!

The still-living nationalist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who was in the news this year when his daughter Darya Dugina died in a bombing that may have been aimed at Dugin himself, is an ongoing influence in the Russian political scene. Dugin has been labeled “Putin’s brain.” (Alasdair Sandford/AP/Reuters, Aleksandr Dugin: Who is 'Putin's brain' and what is his view of Russia's war in Ukraine? Euronews 08/22/2022) And Putin does use terms similar to Dugin’s, though as Sandford notes, Dugin “has no official ties to the Kremlin” and “has no direct link to Russian foreign policy.”

Putin as plausibly depicted by Robert Misik is a ruthlessly pragmatic former KGB operative who got where he is by working closely with gangsters and Mafiosi networks and shows no special attachment to philosophical visions.

However, the Russian leader has shown particular interest in developing a historical narrative for the country and in particular for his own expansionist geopolitical visions, especially when it comes to Ukraine and Belarus. Misik writes (all translations from German here are mine):

Putin, the pragmatic realist, mixes it all together in a gigantic mixer in his Kremlin kitchen. He claws out what is useful and leaves out what seems useless. "Putin reads all the time, mostly about the history of Russia," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in 2011. Over the years, Putin began to argue increasingly that the "universal values" promoted by the West were, by definition, "anti-Russian." Russians [in his view] should be guided by their own values. Community spirit instead of individualism, spirituality instead of consumerism and moral decadence.

Putin’s article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” (07/12/2021) is unlikely to be regarded in the long run as a notable historical or theoretical work. But it has obvious importance for the nationalist ideological framing for the Russian public of his Ukraine policy that would wind up with a full-scale invasion this year. Peter Dickinson analyzed Putin’s piece for the Atlantic Council soon after it was published (Putin’s new Ukraine essay reveals imperial ambitions 07/15/2021), noting that it “features many of [the] talking points favored by Putin throughout the past seven years of undeclared war between Russia and Ukraine.“

Though Putin may feel obliged to justify his war of choice to the Russian people, who with Ukrainians will share the costs of a bloody and drawn-out conflict, his revisionist history is designed to appeal to no one more so than himself. By restoring Russia’s control over its former territories, Putin not only corrects what he sees as a historic wrong but also cements his place in Russian history as the leader who restored the country to its rightful status.

It seems unlikely that Putin’s ideological framing “is designed to appeal to no one more so than himself,“ although emphasizing the grandiosity of his own leadership seems very much consistent with his record. But it’s clear that Putin did want to provide a larger historical-nationalist vision in pursuit of his policy of conquest. Even cynics need marketing, especially if they are leading a war that could wind up in a full-blown nuclear conflict.

“Politics are politics, as the old, case-hardened bourgeois diplomats say.” Stalin himself observed in a famous speech in 1939 that signaled his willingness to make a deal with Germany if Britain and France couldn’t find their way to make a better offer. (Report to the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 03/10/1939)

Pretensions of scholarship may not be necessary. But a national leader, even an authoritarian one like Putin, needs to give his public a reason for going to war. In this case, a war that clearly didn’t turn out to be an cakewalk any more than the Iraq War did for the United States.

Putin and the f-word

Can Putin be called a fascist? Obviously, some people do. Misik seems ambivalent about this definition. On the one hand, he writes:

What is certain is that Putin became more and more rapidly radicalized [in the 2010s]. Eventually, he said publicly: "Every people, and especially the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish the true patriots from the scum and the traitors, to simply spit them out like a mosquito that accidentally flew into their mouth." Inner critics, rebellious oligarchs, the few thousand courageous people who take to the streets against his war, the last remaining rebellious publicists - they are compared to insects that are spat out and crushed. This is the language of pure fascism and totalitarianism.

Misik seems somewhat uncsure on whether he wants to apply the f-world to Putin’s politics. His position could be summarized: It sure looks like fascism to me, but I don’t want to have to parse through a definition of fascism here. Which is understandable, especially for a relatively short book. And, as Misik recounts, during his two-decades-plus rule over Russia, his style of governance has evolved significantly from a rickety but functioning liberal democratic system to a “guided democracy” to a clearly authoritarian system based on oligarchical networks without meaningful democratic control.

Misik writes at one point, “The ideology cobbled together by his regime in its radicalization process is no longer unlike a fascist delusional system.“ His mildly ambiguous characterization is somewhat clarified by his later comment that Putin’s regime has four characteristics he takes as fascist: “autocratic rule, patriotism, territory/empire and Orthodox spirituality.” But he also notes that there is also an absence of an “ethnic purity” emphasis, which Misik describes as “a significant different to most fascist ideologies.”

Political science isn’t natural science, and coming up with a clear-cut definition of fascism is notoriously challenging. Coming up with one that everyone can agree on is impossible. Since Mussolini’s party called itself the Fascist Party, anything that pretty obviously fits the basics of Mussolini’s movement - authoritarian government defending an oligarchic capitalist economy based on rabid nationalism and hatred of the entire liberal and democratic “Western” tradition including its socialist and communist variations and individual rights and organized labor and gender equality - looks fascist to me. Putin’s government style checks all those boxes.

Authoritarian religion can be and has been an important part of fascist movements and fascist rule. And Putin’s promotion of “Orthodox spirituality” is certainly a prominent part of his political project. But it doesn’t have to be Eastern Orthodox Christianity, or even Christianity at all. Current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi uses a brand of Hindu fundamentalism for the same purpose. Italian fascism and its Austrian clone made much of their Catholic identity. White Christian nationalism plays that role for Trumpism in the US, though imagining a less conventionally pious man than Donald Trump would be very difficult..

I would say Misik gives Russian Putinism too easy a pass on the “ethnic purity” front. Militant rightwing nationalism always winds up there. The current wartime ideology negating the legitimate existence of Ukraine as a national entity, and the very concrete deportation of Ukrainians and unaccompanied children (labeled “orphans”) deep into Russia as part of an explicit policy to breed a bigger populartion in Russia certainly is a politico-biological move. The fact that the deported Ukrainian are meant to breed new Russians doesn’t mean its not very much a ethnonationalist project.

Misik also makes clear that the far-right in Europe and the US increasingly look to Putin as an ideological godfather. Far-right parties in Austria (FPÖ/Freedom Party), Italy (Lega [formerly Lega Nord]), and France (Marine Le Pen’s Rassenblementt National) have made formal cooperation agreements with Putin’s United Russia party in the recent past. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán provides a more respectable public model at the moment for the anti-democracy rightwing in the West, including the American Trumpistas. The Cold War triumphalist narrative in which the fall of the Soviet Union meant that the neoliberal political and economic policy had redeemed Russia from its sinful past is pretty much in shambles at the moment. But now that Putin is the West most prominent Big Bad of the moment, it’s worth remembering that the current form of governance and foreign policy didn’t emerge full-blown the moment the USSR formally ceased to exist. Some of the milestones include:

• Shelling of the Russian Duma (Parliament) building (1993) (Yeltsin Shelled Russian Parliament 25 Years Ago, U.S. Praised “Superb Handling” National Security Archive 10/04/2018)
• First Chechen War (1994-96) This involved a revolt by a predominantly Muslim part of Russia itself.
• Second Chechen War (1999-2000) Putin was then Prime Minister under Yeltsin and was directly responsible for the aggressive military suppression of the Chechen revolt. His handling of that conflict is now cited as a precedent for his actions in Ukraine.
• NATO enlargement: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland (1999) Yeltsin’s government reluctantly accepted this action.
• Kosovo War (1999) The US and NATO intervened on behalf of Kosovo, a province of Russia’s ally Serbia. Kosovo formally declared independence from Serbia. The US and some EU countries recognize Kosovo as an independent state. (On the road to becoming a fully-functioning state German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development; accessed 10/24/2022) Russia’s insistence that NATO violated Serbia’s sovereignty in that war is not just a propaganda fantasy. That intervention’s status is international law is questionable at best. War Over Kosovo (2001), edited by Andrew Bacevich and Eliot Cohen, is an excellent source on that action.
• Putin becomes President of the Russian Federation (2000) He was Yeltsin’s favored successor. Putin was the effective leader of Russia from then until now. For constitutional reasons, he left the Presidency and served against as Prime Minister 2008-2012 under President Dmitry Medvedev, but Putin was generally recognized as the actual leader.
• Putin’s speech (in fluent German) to the German Bundestag (25.09.2001) This speech showed a seeming openness of Putin’s part to friendly cooperation with the West. Taking place as it did two weeks after Al Qaida’s attacks on New York and Washington, it seemed plausible at the time that a closer cooperation of Russia, the US, and other NATO countries in the famous War on Terror might be possible.
• NATO enlargement: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia (2004) The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been formally part of the Soviet Union.
• Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004) This followed the so-called Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003) and a “tulip revolution” in Kyrgyzstan (2005).
• Munich Security Conference 2007 Putin’s speech at the conference denounced the strategy of the US, officially adopted by the Bush-Cheney Administration as policy, of maintaining a clear status as the world’s unipolar hegemonic power. (Louis Charbonneau, Putin says U.S. wants to dominate world Reuters 02/10/2007) The Kremlin website provides this English-language text of the speech, Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security Policy 02/10/2007. This speech of Putin’s is generally understood as Russia adopting a generally more confrontive foreign policy toward the US and its allies. To the extent there was any substance to what Misik sarcastically describes as “some Western leftists” regarding Putin as a “admirable anti-imperialist,” it is largely based on statements like this and foreign policy actions in pursuit of that approach.
• NATO’s Bucharest Declaration (2008) This official announcement included the remarkably inept combination of confirming that both Georgia and Ukraine would become members of NATO but without beginning the formal accession process.
• Russia-Georgia War (2008) Michael Kofman has argued that this five-day conflict over the separatist Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia ”heralded an important transition in international politics which “presaged the return of great-power politics and the end of the post-Cold War period.” (The August War, Ten Years On_ A Retrospective on the Russo-Georgia War War on the Rocks 08/17/2018)
• NATO enlargement: Albania, Croatia (2009)
• “Euromaidan” protests in Ukraine (2014) Russia then seized and formally annexed Crimea and occupied two separatist “republics” in the Ukrainian Donbas region.
• NATO enlargement-Montenegro (2017)
• NATO enlargement-North Macedonia (2020)
• Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022)

Misik also traces the increasing authoritarianism in Putin’s internal governance, with a long-term trend toward less tolerance of dissent and press freedom and increasingly “managed” elections.

The 1990s were a very difficult period economically during the neoliberal “shock therapy” that the Yeltsin government adopted at Western urging. Misik notes that Putin as President initially portrayed the 1990s as the main problem to which his government was responding. Rising prices for oil and gas helped to produce notable prosperity for the public generally and particularly for a growing middle class. But Russia’s status as a petrostate is both a blessing and a curse. And when the oil markets weakened then the negative effect of Russia’s economy was very evident.

So Putin’s government has for years stressed the threat he portrays as the decadent West. Misik tends to minimize the effect of the NATO expansion in itself on Putin’s changing foreign policy stance. He argues that Putin is actually more fearful of democratic contagion from the Ukraine and other neighboring countries: “As a real threat, Purin may have seen not so much NATO, but the approach of democracy - in a sense, the ‘eastward expansion of democratic citizens' movements’.”

While it would be an exaggeration to say that is a distinction without a difference, the latter concern isn’t independent of the former. It’s become an insistent New Cold War talking point that the expansion of NATO had nothing at all to do with Russian security fears. But the idea that Russia would have no reasonable or legitimate security concerns about NATO enlargement is simply not credible.

In the first round of enlargement, the Clinton Administration and NATO set up a formal consultation process with Russia and thus in practice acknowledging the legitimacy of such concerns. If Putin really had turned out to be the “flawless democrat“ (lupenreiner Demokrat) that German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder once absurdly described him to be, his government would still have regarded NATO expansion as a serious security concern. Any Russia government would have.

Putin and the oligarchs

Misik also provides an accessible description of Putin’s dealings with Russia’s network of spies, mobsters, and oligarchs. And he gives this useful summary of Putin’s basic approach to establishing his rule in a system of oligarchic capitalism:

The [oligarchical] networks are stable, but have changed their character over the years. In the wild capitalism of the nineties, the state was weak and the oligarchs clawed at what they could get and developed a life of their own vis-à-vis political power. Putin, on the other hand, has curbed the oligarchs and has either nationalized essential parts of the raw material production - oil, gas, rare metals - or entrenched them with those oligarchs who were willing to act as a sort of licensee without total control (i.e. under his direction, so to speak). It is now others who are stealing, and it works in a different way - but it remains a kleptocracy in which anyone can help themselves and in which the assets seep away in black networks.