24/11/22, 23:34 Scientific Putinism: Shaping Official Ideology in Russia - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Scientific Putinism: Shaping Official

Ideology in Russia
21.11.2022

Andrei

Kolesnikov

Putin has managed to persuade a large section of Russians that the “special operation” of 2022 is a natural
continuation of World War II. In essence, it is an existential war between the Russian civilization and the
West.

There is a belief that the Russian elite under President Vladimir Putin has only ever been interested in money.
Yet Putin’s militant, anti-liberal, anti-Western, isolationist, paternalistic, and harshly authoritarian regime has
always had an ideology. This ideology is not systematized, but it does exist, and snippets of it can be found
throughout Putin’s speeches, articles, and interviews. Now the war in Ukraine has necessitated a more
articulated ideology. 

The initiative to systematize and codify Putinism has led to a presidential decree listing “traditional spiritual
and moral values,” as well as the development of a new ideological curriculum for colleges. It is no longer
enough to indoctrinate children in kindergartens and schools. It is now time to unify the worldviews of college
students (and, by extension, those of their professors, whose ranks will inevitably be purged). This type of
course was taught during the Soviet era, and was known as “Scientific Communism.” 

The name for the new curriculum could be even more absurd and oxymoronic: “Scientific Putinism.” (Its
official title is “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood.”) This course should presumably have four units:
“History” (historical policy as the imposition of a mythologized official version of history, which is one of the
instruments for manipulating the mass consciousness of Russians); “Cultural Codes” (“traditional spiritual and
moral values,” which Putin has ordered federal and regional government bodies to “unify”); “Russia and the
World” (a justification of isolationism, anti-Westernism, and jingoism); and “Vision for the Future” (Russia
completely lacks any goal-setting, and needs some sort of agreement on what the state wants to achieve
beyond victory over Ukraine and the destruction of the “fifth column”).

Such a curriculum justifies the cult of the eternal leader and the idea of sacrificial heroism (including the
“heroic death” that the Patriarch Kirill has suggested will wash away any mortal sins in a “just, defensive war
of liberation”). It is also in line with the religious discourse according to which Russia is fighting the forces of
evil and Satan, as illustrated by statements about the “special military operation” as a “war of the army of the
Archangel Michael against the devil” and the need to “de-satanize” Ukraine. 

However, Scientific Putinism lacks key components: development goals and a corresponding vision for the
future. The problem is that it is an ideology of the past rather than the future. During Dmitry Medvedev’s
presidency, there were teams working on a future-oriented ideology and making road maps based on the idea

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24/11/22, 23:34 Scientific Putinism: Shaping Official Ideology in Russia - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
that Russia would fast-track the modernization of the state and society. Putin’s ideology, however, is counter-
modernizational. 

Putin’s war is the applied concept of the superiority of the “spiritual essence” of the Russian nation over the
“decaying West,” which has been fueled for decades and even centuries by aggressive Russian nationalism
mixed with imperialism (including the territorial “Russian world”), Russian messianism, and the idea of a
“special path” for Russia.  

Of course, the modernization that Russia has experienced conflicts with this traditionalism verging on
fundamentalism, as did the pragmatic interests of a Russian society that had adapted to a market economy
following the transition of the 1990s. Nevertheless, as his regime matured, Putin was able to convince a
significant portion of the population that Russia needs to regain its great-power status, and that Russia is
under attack by the liberal West and the traitorous liberal fifth column within. As the regime grew more
authoritarian, its ideology became more and more archaic, its propaganda more obtrusive, and hopes for the
resumption of modernization dwindled. 

Ideologies serve to unify mass consciousness and perceptions of history and political order, and use rituals to
reinforce mass beliefs. An ideology that consists of historical, cultural, and religious myths; bogus traditions;
and resentment and ressentiment seeks to legitimize an authoritarian regime and delegitimize those who
oppose it and don’t share the regime’s notions of reality. Such an ideology makes it possible to label
nonconformists as enemies, “foreign agents,” LGBT activists, and “national traitors,” and to divide people into
“us” and “them.” “We” are spiritual, traditional, authentic, unique, sacrificial, and sovereign; “they” are
unspiritual, rational, and “cosmopolitan” (a pejorative, anti-Semitic Soviet term for those perceived as
insufficiently patriotic). 

The division into “us” and “them” doesn’t just provide a marker for self-identification and an opportunity to
dissolve and hide within the group and to function in society without problems. It also serves to convince the
public that there is a certain majority from which they should not stray. In this sense, “we” is simultaneously a
political technology, the target audience of this political technology, and an ideological construct.  

In the past, the only requirement for being part of the “us” was passive, silent, conformist support. Today,
however, this is not enough: Russians must surrender their very bodies to be cannon fodder in the supreme
leader’s holy war against the “satanist” forces of the West. This is no longer authoritarianism; it is
totalitarianism.

Imperialism and colonialism are key components of Putinism and key factors in the war. There is nothing new
about this ideology; it comes almost verbatim from Stalinism and from earlier Eurasian and Slavophile
narratives. The war is being passed off as striving to restore historical fairness, as defensive and preventive,
and as liberational. According to Putin, the land of the empire must be “returned and reinforced.” 

In just a few years, the regime has evolved from a cult of the victory of 1945 to a cult of war itself, and Putin
has managed to persuade a large section of Russians that the “special operation” of 2022 is a natural
continuation of the Great Patriotic War (as World War II is called in Russia). In essence, it is an existential war
between the Russian civilization and the West.

Putin has started to refer to Russia as an entire civilization. The state is not just sacred and worthy of the
ultimate sacrifice; it is also a separate and superior civilization. This state-civilization has a special path and a
“thousand-year history.” Within this history, cultural codes are being passed down from generation to
generation as part of the country’s political DNA. This state-civilization has its own pantheon of heroes, which
is unchanged from the Soviet era to the Putin era: Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great,
Joseph Stalin, Yuri Gagarin, and others.

Over its “thousand-year history,” this state-civilization has always been under attack by enviers and foes. This
state of permanent conflict is critical, and it is not limited to the battlefield: the state must win in all aspects—in
culture and in sports, in the construction of Olympic facilities, and in the war against Ukraine and the West.  

In that context, one important concept is sovereignty interpreted as autarky and as boundless political and
repressive rule within the country; sovereignty as a target for adversaries who want to weaken, dismember,
and destroy Russia; sovereignty that is under hybrid attacks from without and sabotaged by the “fifth column”
from within. 

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To defend the sovereignty of this state-civilization, the Kremlin is counting on the security services, or siloviki.
They are getting additional funding and being reinforced by spin doctors and so-called “journalists” in the
service of the Kremlin. The Culture Ministry, the communications watchdog Roskomnadzor, and other
institutions like the Russian Orthodox Church that defend “traditional values” are becoming de facto siloviki
themselves, as they have the right to block or ban media, restrict the sales of books by authors who oppose
the war, and decide who can perform on theater stages.

The ideology has become corporeal, bolstered by political and military acts, such as the annexation of Crimea
and the “special military operation.” In short, the special ideological operation is ongoing, and it seems to be
faring better than the special military one. 

End of document

Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those
of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

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