Journal of Contemporary European Studies

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Russia as an international conservative power: the

rise of the right-wing populists and their affinity
towards Russia

Glenn Diesen

To cite this article: Glenn Diesen (2020) Russia as an international conservative power: the rise
of the right-wing populists and their affinity towards Russia, Journal of Contemporary European
Studies, 28:2, 182-196, DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2019.1705770

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2019.1705770

Published online: 25 Dec 2019.

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JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES
2020, VOL. 28, NO. 2, 182–196
https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2019.1705770

ARTICLE

Russia as an international conservative power: the rise of the

right-wing populists and their affinity towards Russia
Glenn Diesen
Higher School of Economics, National Research University, Moscow, Russia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The majority of right-wing populists across the West share two fundamental Russia; Populism;
commonalities – the rejection of liberal ideals that have laid the foundation Conservatism; Liberalism
for Western unity, and greater affinity towards Russia. Western right-wing
populists and Russia share the ambition to revive classical conservatism,
which addresses how to manage change, a key focus throughout the 19th
century and early 20th century when modernity challenged social integrity
and coherence. Russia has returned to its pre-communist role as the go-to-
country for classical conservatives in the West, although four decades of the
neoliberalism consensus in the West has eviscerated classical conservatism. In
its vacuum, populists are rising on a platform that scorns the unfettered
liberalism of political elites as an assault on the community. Empathy with
Russia, if not a common cause, is challenging the ideational structures and
division of Europe.After the Cold War, the capitalist-communist divide was
recast as a liberal democracy–authoritarian divide, which is now undermined
by populists’ view of the world split along a national-patriotism versus
cosmopolitan-globalism divide where Russia transitions from being an adver-
sary to an ally.

Introduction
Blaming Russia for the insurgency against the Western political establishment and Putin for pulling
the strings behind every vote is becoming increasingly preposterous, yet the puzzle to be explored is
what explains the rise of the populists and why they are overwhelmingly ‘pro-Russian’?The reorga-
nisation of Europe after the Cold War is defined by continuity as the former capitalist-communist
divide was reframed as a liberal democratic-authoritarian divide. The continuity of liberalism remains
a unifying characteristic of the West and the reason for the continued exclusion of Russia from
Europe. Maintaining the binary ideological logic of the Cold War neglects that social conservatism,
which also places restrictions on liberalism, is a third alternative with deep roots in both the West and
Russia.
Post-Cold War liberalism represents a radical departure from the past by extolling liberalism as an
absolute solution, and thereby neglecting the contradictory impulses of human beings and society
that have historically been facilitated by political pluralism to balance liberalism and conservatism.
While liberalism and the nation-state grew up together, they have in recent years accelerated their
decoupling. Political liberalism emancipates the individual from arbitrary authority, yet liberalismhas
coexisted with the authority of the nation-state as a community defined byvarious degrees of ethnic,
cultural and religious homogeneity. Economic liberalism increases efficiency and prosperity, which

CONTACT Glenn Diesen gdiesen@gmail.com Higher School of Economics, National Research University, Moscow,
Russian
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES 183

has historically been balanced with state intervention to mitigate the social implications from
creative destruction caused byunfettered market forces.
Populists emerge in the vacuum created by liberal dogmas. Most virtues become vices in their
excess, as evident by liberal ideology becoming illiberal byrejecting ideological alternatives in
response to the anarchy caused by liberalism fuellingradical individualism, atomisation of society,
and a weakening of social capital. Lasch (1996, 28–29) argued already in the 1990s that liberals were
becoming increasingly hostile to conservative values: for liberals, Middle America ‘has come to
symbolise everything that stands in the way of progress: “family values”, mindless patriotism,
religious fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, retrograde views of women’.Populists respond to
real problems in society neglected by the liberal establishment, yet they do not necessarily have
viable answers (Laclau 2005). The rise of populism is a symptom of a crisis in post-Cold War liberalism,
which has inadvertently made Russia a leader in the burgeoninginternational conservative move-
ment. Classical conservatives in Western Europe have for centuries looked towards traditional
Russian society as a source of cultural and spiritual renewal to balance the creative destruction
from rapid modernisation and social progressiveness. We are now coming full circle as Russia has
returned to its pre-communist role as an anchor to European traditionalism. Russia transitions from
being an adversary to an indispensable ally for populists who seek to replace the liberal democracy-
authoritarian divide with a struggle of national-patriotism against cosmopolitan-globalism.
The purpose of this article is to explore the source of the populist rise and their affinity towards
Russia as an international conservative power. It is argued that classical conservatism had an
important role throughout the 19th century and the early 20th century to manage the challenges
of modernity during the first wave on globalisation. The binary ideological prism of the Cold War
obscured that conservatism to some extent places the community above the individual, which is
why liberalism alone could not sufficiently address the weakening of common identities and social
cohesion.This article will first define populism as a corrective mechanism to balancing the excesses of
liberalism. Populism is commonly treated as an abnormality and a problem to be overcome, rather
than a reaction to restore a balance between the individual and community, the instinctive and
rational, the distinctive and universal, tradition and modernity, stasis and transformation. Second,
Russia’s return to its historical role as a European conservative power is explored. It is argued that
Russia is reviving conservatism to restore a shared national identity and as a source for influence and
integration with Europe. Last, the populists’ affinity towards Russia is addressed as Russia is widely
viewed as a conservative anchor to constrain excessive liberalism.

Populism as a corrective mechanism to the excesses of liberalism

Populism is a contested concept used primarily with negative connotations. Populism is commonly
defined by nativism, anti-establishment and authoritarianism (Pauwels 2011; Mudde 2016, 4).
Populistscan be identified by their rhetorical division between elites and the people, and detach
themselves from the identity of ‘elites’ irrespective of social, political and economic status (Müller
2017). Right-wing populists and tend to define the people in a manner that excludes immigrants,
bureaucrats and political opposition (Stanley 2008). Left-wing populists similarly profess
a decoupling of the elites from the people, although the widening gap is based on arguments of
anti-capitalism, social justice and pacifism as evident with Podemos in Spain or Syriza in Greece.
Populism is also described by the delivery of political messages in a simplistic and direct language
that appeals to the average person and contrasted with the lingo of the elitists (Taguieff 2007).
Populism attacks globalism as an aberration from globalisation. Populists commonly depict
globalism as a neoliberal global order elevated above national interests. A top-down revision of
the international system is advanced by weakening the sovereignty of states as international
institutions impose laws that trump domestic legislation, multiculturalism displacing national cul-
ture, and free trade is prioritised above the protection of the domestic labourers. In contrast,
populists rend to support globalisation as the increased flow of goods, services, finance, people
184 G. DIESEN

and ideas, to the extent it serves national interests. Using the analogy of the international system as
a large house: globalisation aims to open up more doors between the distinctive rooms, while
globalism aims to tear down the walls and create one big common room. International cooperation
does not have the purpose of transcending the nation, instead the international community is
founded on and dependent on the preservation of the national. Human beings are a social animal
endeavouring to organise in larger and more complex society, while also instinctively tribal in terms
of seeking distinctive communities based on similarities. August Bebel (1876) famously argued: ‘The
family forms a tribe, and several tribes form a state and the nation – and finally the close interaction
of nations will result in internationality’. From this perspective, sustainable globalisation is premised
on the recognition that the international community is built upon the distinctive nation-state. In
contrast, globalist ideology assumes that the world integrates towards universalism by dispensing
off distinctiveness and tribalism as a relic of the past.
The EU has become a natural target of populists due to its elitist identity as an institution seeking
to break with the nation-state as a relic of tribalism from the past (Jansen 2015). The nativism and
resistance to immigration also attract right-wing racists to the platform of the populists (Vieten and
Poynting 2016).Breaking with liberal traditions and liberal elites, Abts and Rummens (2007) go as far
as characterising populism as quasi-totalitarian ideology. The issue of division is a key disagreement
concerning populism. The criticism of populism focuses on the divisive nature of populists by ‘real
people’ and the elites (Müller 2017). In contrast, populists tend to castigate liberal elites for their
excessive inclusiveness that fails to create a common identity, which results in nobody being
a foreigner and nobody being home.
Populist play on the divide between the electorate and the political elites, yet this is not
necessarily deceptive as a growing divide exists. The first wave of globalisation from the 1870s
and 1880s with an explosion in cross-border international trade and movement of people initially
appeared to be a trend that would eliminate the Westphalian system of sovereign nation-states. Yet,
globalisation also informed statehood as borders were reinforced with passports and hygiene
control. Globalisation also fuelled nationalist sentiments and diaspora nationalism as the ethno-
cultural distinction that united ‘us’ and ‘them’ became more pronounced. Society was also divided as
urbanised centres thrived, while traditional communities and values came under pressure.
A disconnect between economic and social development also became more evident as industry
created a demand for workers, yet society received people. Populism also made its way to the US. In
California, a workers union leader named Denis Kearney castigated the use of Chinese labour, who
under the slogan ‘the Chinese must go’ promoted nativism, criticism of capitalism, contempt for the
media, and resentment of the elites. With the premise that the detached political-media elites were
not serving the interests of the people, Kearney threatened that ‘bullets would replace ballots’ unless
Chinese labour and immigration were scaled back and economic interests would again be aligned
with the interests of the American people.
Populism can be conceptualised as a corrective mechanism that restores a balance between the
individual and community when modernity strengthens the former at the peril of the latter. Plato
initially deliberated on humanity’s position between the rational and instinctive, and recognised the
need to balance the internal order of the soul and the external order. Plato posited that democracy
becomes freer the longer it exists and eventually liberates itself from the past, traditions, rules, and
authority – before descending into tyranny. Plato (2016, 216) therefore cautioned that democracy is
transitory as in victory it finds defeat, andin the ensuing chaos a tyrant would be invited to restore
order:

Can liberty have any limit? Certainly not . . . By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses . . . The son is
on a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either of his parents; and this is his freedom . . .
Citizens chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority.

Liberalism grew out of the Enlightenment project as the individual was liberated from arbitrary
authority and unchosen relationships. Yet, embracing liberalism to its fullest extent can deconstruct
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES 185

the source of community, identity, security, meaning and unity. Modernity came at the expense of
the traditional, which caused a pendulum swing back in the form of the Counter-Enlightenment
movement and Romanticism of the 19th and 20th Centuries. The absolutism of the Enlightenment
and rationality neglected that human beings are flawed by also acting on ancient instincts (Herder
[1966] 1800). Burckhardt [2010] 1878The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, depicted the
Renaissance and modernity as pernicious and dark developments since rapid changes caused
disconnect with the past, individualism led to egotism and hedonism, and culture became
a commodity. In the late 19th century, Émile Durkheimobserved that the individualism embedded
in capitalism had drastically increased both economic growth and the suicide rate. Liberating the
individual from traditional ethno-cultural and religious structuresfails to recognise that a balance is
required between individualistic and the collective that delineates between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Mill
[1859] 2001, 65) even referred to the tyranny of traditions as they obstruct the freedoms and
advancements of the individual:

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing
antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary, which is called, according to
circumstances, the spirit of liberty, or that of progress or improvement . . . Custom is there [in the East], in all
things, the final appeal; justice and right mean conformity to custom.

The common contemporary viewabout human evolution, consistent with liberal ideology, assumes
that since the Enlightenment we have progressed on a linear path by becoming increasingly rational.
Advancement is measured by shedding our irrational past and hierarchies that constrained the
individual.The alternative understanding of human evolution suggests the irrational/instinctive is
imperishable. Human beingsare drawn between contradictory impulses, pulling mankind towards
both the rational/calculative and irrational/instinctive. Evolutionary biology equipped human beings
with instincts to survive, which has for tens of thousands of years been to organise in smaller
communities based on inter-personal ties. Security and even sense of immortality were established
by uniting and reproducing the past in accordance with blood, place, spirituality, kinship, and
culture. Rationality enabled mankind to shed the superstition of the past and venture towards
a more humane civilisation and advanced society. Yet, the emergence of rationality is the source
of the duality of mankind. The primordial instincts are biologically ingrained in the nervous system to
reward the ‘correct’ behaviour with a sense of security and meaning, and to punish deviation from
the instinctive with insecurity and nihilism.
Conservatism builds on the recognition that the community can be superior to the individual as
mankind is a social creature acting on both instinct and rationality (Huntington 1957, 456).
Conservatism does not reject change and development, rather change must be managed and
build on a distinctive history and traditions.Philosophers and sociologists throughout the 19th and
early 20th century werepreoccupied with the seemingly contradictory impulses within human
nature, gravitating both towards the traditional/spiritual and the modern/rational. Tonnies [1957]
1887 argued that the traditional and spiritual was found in the community (gemeinschaft), which
was contrasted with the development of modern and rational industrial society (gesellschaft). The
community represented close communities with inter-personal ties and high social capital, united by
blood, place, spirit, and common fate. The community laid the foundation for identity, belonging,
morality, trust, and even a sense of immorality by reproducing its distinct character. In contrast,
society entails large-scale, cosmopolitan and complex organisation of humanity, which human
beings also gravitate towards in search of the calculative and rational.Oswald Spengler (1991)
cautioned that decadence sets in when civilisations outgrow the culture from which they emerged.
Pitirim Sorokin (1941) warned about depravity of civilisation when the material and modern dis-
places the spiritual and traditional. In his observations of the US, Alexis de Tocqueville similarly
argued that that unchecked individualism and materialism would undermine democracy. The duality
of mankind also made its way into modern political science, with Kennan (1993, 17) argued ‘Man, to
the degree that he tries to shape his behaviour to the requirements of civilisation, is unquestionably
186 G. DIESEN

a cracked vessel. His nature is the scene of a never-ending and never quite resolvable conflict
between two very profound impulses’.
The discipline of psychology has been successful in terms of mapping out the philosophy behind
the distinctive and universal explored by philosophers and political scientists. Sigmund Freud
referred to instinctive impulses or the ‘primitive mind’ as ‘imperishable’, while Carl Jung recognised
that instinctive impulses constrain rationality as ‘free will only exist within the limits of conscious-
ness’. Modern behavioural psychologyproves that conservatives and liberal across space and time
consistently demonstrates two different concepts of morality. Both conservatives and liberals view
morality as detesting harm, seeking fairness and reciprocity.Yet, conservatives also include in-group
loyalty and authority/respect as moral codes (Haidt 2012).The liberal and conservative definition of
morality commonly conflictsover topics such as welfare programs and feminism, which are moral
expressions of care and fairness, albeit they can dilute the dominant role of the family as the principal
institution for in-group loyalty and authority. Similarly, multiculturalism is reasoned with inclusion as
a form of care and fairness, yet it undermines the morality of assimilation and social capital deriving
from in-group loyalty (Haidt 2012). While conservatism and liberalism reflect the opposite gravita-
tional pulls in human nature, they are also mutually dependent to establish a balance that places
human beings and society between continuity and change. Excessive conservatism tends to close off
to new experiences, openness, development and necessary renewal. Excessive liberalism decon-
structs the authority and in-group loyalty thatmaintains the social capital of family, communities and
nation-states.

Unbalanced political liberalism

Western political pluralism facilitated a delicatebalance between liberalism and conservatism in
response to the contradictory impulses of human beings. The European nation-state became the
most powerful entity of power as a large ethno-cultural tribe that replicates the kinship and shared
identity of the community, which established a stable foundation to advance inclusive civic identi-
tiesand universal values. The European nation-state subsequently became the sturdiest vessel to
elevate human freedom and progress as these values were practised within a strong and functioning
community. Economic liberalism has similarly been balanced with economic nationalism. Free-trade
enhanced efficiency and prosperity, while state intervention was utilised to the extent it enhanced
competitiveness in international markets and protected traditional community from the creative
destruction of market forces.
The Western political establishment embraced the argument of Fukuyama (1989) that the victory of liberalism
represents the ‘end of history’. Although, three decades later, Fukuyama (2018) recognises that liberalism does
not address the issue of what provides people with a sense of purpose and community, and is also proving inept
to redistribute wealth.The assumption that liberalism is the final destination of humanity implies that the
internal contradictions within liberalism are mere correctable aberrations that can be resolved by the mechan-
isms within liberalism. The binary ideological division during the Cold War, mirroring the bipolar power
distribution, induced policymakers to believe there were no alternatives to liberal democracy (Sakwa 2017).
Huntington (1993, 191) critiqued that the Single Alternative Fallacy, which “is rooted in the Cold War assumption
that the only alternative to communism is liberal democracy and that the demise of the first produces the
universality of the second”. Solzhenitsyn (1978, 26) recognised the single alternative fallacy by criticising both
capitalism and communism for failing to preserve the traditional and instinctive:

[Our spiritual life] is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial
interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the worlds is less terrible than the similarity of the
disease plaguing its main sections.

Traditional society was challenged by liberal movements of the 1960s that advanced the rights of
minorities and women, although also correlating with the decline in religious practise and
deindustrialisation. While the US has through its history had ethno-cultural nationalism dominant
over a civic identity, this changed in the 1960s (Kaufmann 2000). The term ‘assimilation’ itself had
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES 187

become overwhelmingly a negative term by equating it to cultural genocide (Glazer 1993). New
liberal ideals instead advocated that minorities should have the right to preserve their native
culture and not conform to the nation (Glazer 1993, 123). Under the mantra of ‘inclusion’ and
‘diversity’, the ideology of multiculturalism challenged national culture as acomponent of
a shared identity and community. Ethno-cultural identities cannot be transcended and multi-
culturalism gave birth to identity politics as various identity groups began to fight for the
redistribution of resources: ‘The breakup of the traditional authority structures and the previous
affective social units- historically nation and class . . . make the ethnic attachment more salient’
(Bell 1975, 171).Identity politics does not liberate the individual from the constraints of collective
identities,rather divisive societal sub-groups harness the instinctive impulses to organise accord-
ing to identity groups that undergo their own internal homogenisation and ‘othering’ of exter-
nals. Identity politics shares similarities with ethno-cultural nationalism due to the insistence that
one’s group identity consisted in some existential, supposedly primordial, unchangeable and
therefore permanent personal characteristics shared with other members of the group, and
with no one else. Exclusiveness was all the more essential to it, since the actual differences
which marked human communities off from each other were attenuated (Hobsbawm 2007,
pp.428–429).
Rivalry emerges within the state, which mirrors the competition for resources between states
caused by international anarchy. Each identity group attains ‘political leverage of group loyalty’
(Hobsbawm 2007, 428).Hobsbawm (2007, 93) posited that the process which turned peasants into
Frenchmen and immigrants into American citizens is reversing, and it crumbles larger nation-state
identities into self-regarding group identities. The result is Aristotle’s pernicious ‘deviant democracy’,
where the rule of the self-serving masses only advances their own interests. Putnam (2007, 150)
demonstrated that

Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless
of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its
leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less,
to agitate for social reform more but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle
unhappily in front of the television.

As the neoliberal consensus consumes classical conservatism, an identity crisis is unleashed in the
West. Angela Merkel proclaimed in October 2010 that ‘the multicultural concept is a failure, an
absolute failure’, and David Cameron (2011) warned that ‘Under the doctrine of state multicultural-
ism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart
from the mainstream’. Yet, the lingering delusion about transcending the nation-state is evident by
a statement by Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, who proclaimed
that borders are the ‘worst invention ever made by politicians’. Western societies inevitably polarise
as liberalism decouples from its coexistence with conservatism.

Unbalanced economic liberalism

Traditionally, both the political Left and the political Right were apprehensive about unfettered market
forces. The Left sought political intervention to protect the working class due to the imbalances
between capital and labour in industrial society. The Right advocated in favour of restricting market
forces to conserve historical traditions, family values and communities. Leading thinkers of economic
liberalism were more measured by recognising both the economic benefits and social costs of
maximising market efficiency. Adam Smith argued that the ‘hidden hand’ reduced the need for central
planning, although he acknowledged that self-regulating markets could not always deliver social
goods (Norman 2018). Smith (2006, 58) also cautioned against the corruption of morality due to ‘the
disposition to admire, and almost worship, the rich and powerful’. Ricardo (1821, 474) and Keynes
(2016, 272) recognised that improved productivity from technological innovations could strengthen
188 G. DIESEN

capital and weaken labourers. Hayek (1979, 54–55) advocated in favour of the state providing a safety
net was necessary for a ‘Great Society’.
The economic system that existed from the Second World War to the 1980s was largely defined by
the significant social responsibilities of the state. The West practised ‘embedded liberalism’, which
implied a compromise between liberal economics and state interventionism to mitigate destructive
market forces on the individual (Ruggie 1982). The concept of ‘embedded liberalism’ derived from
Polanyi’s (1957) book, The Great Transformation, which suggested that markets became disem-
bedded from society and the behavioural patterns of human beings during the 19th century.
Under embedded liberalism, the state protected strategic industries to maintain competitiveness
in international competition, and protected workers from the creative destruction caused by market
forces and new technologies. While unrecognisable today, classical conservatives in the past had
a strong communitarian aspect. Yet, political legitimacy after the Second World War had become
reliant on delivering continuous economic growth, which caused a crisis when economies stagnated
in the 1970s. The solution was British Thatcherism and American Reaganism of the 1980s, radical
economic liberalism that embraced ‘flexible labour market’ by repudiating the welfare state, regula-
tions and national ownership of industry. The disruption to the balance between social responsibility
and economic efficiency was reasonable as a temporary response to stagnation, yet it was embraced
as a guiding economic philosophy. The political Left and Right scaled back their commitment to the
working class and traditional values, and a neoliberal consensus emerged with a shared devotion to
market efficiency and the freedom of consumer choice.
The combination of global markets and new technologies are causing ‘the completely unprece-
dented personal economic insecurity of working people’ (Luttwak 1993). The disconnect between
the urban elites and those valuing the traditional is expected to only exacerbate: ‘This world
economy will soon be owned by a cosmopolitan upper class which has no more sense of community
with any workers anywhere than the great American capitalists of the year 1900ʹ (Rorty 1998). In the
1990s, Rodrik (1997) predicted that the intensification of globalisation would make the world more
efficient but impose intolerable social costs. As tariffs and trade barriers were de-constructed, wages
would face downward pressures, employee protection laws scaled back, regulations suspended, and
more demand placed on an increasingly flexible labour market. Since the 1970s, lower-skilled
American and European workers have experienced a radical fall in the real value of their salaries.
Furthermore, there were less job security, higher unemployment, longer and more volatile working
hours. Unrestrained economic integration was expected to cause ‘social disintegration’ that would
have severe political consequences (Rodrik 2012, 294).Rorty (1998) expected excessive economic
liberalism to be followed by political populism:

Members of labor unions, and unorganized and unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their
government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported.
Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers – themselves desperately afraid of
being downsized – are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else. At that
point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking
around for a strongman to vote for – someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug
bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the
shots . . . Once the strongman takes office, no one can predict what will happen.

Trump harnessed the political frustration with a detached political elite by positioned himself as
a strongman with nativist and economic nationalist leanings, determined to restore international
competitiveness and protect blue-collar workers from free trade by instead arguing for fair-trade.
Repudiating free trade has a strong moral position in American history. Alexander Hamilton linked
economic nationalism to statehood with the argument that the US had to develop economic
independence from Britain to ensure political independence was viable. Throughout the 19th
century, the political leadership in the US supported the American System, a three-pillared devel-
opment strategy with state intervention in the economy to develop a mature manufacturing
industry, transportation infrastructure and a strong national bank. Theodore Roosevelt wrote in
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES 189

1895: ‘Thank God I am not a free-trader. In this country pernicious indulgence in the doctrine of free
trade seems inevitably to produce fatty degeneration of the moral fibre’ (Eckes 1999, 30).

The return of Russia as an international conservative power

A key flaw in Western analysis of Russia is the neglect of its strong historical traditions of conserva-
tism. To explain the prelude to communism, Western scholars focus on Russia’s pre-communist
history tends to be limited to the narrative of the socialist revolutionaries versus Westernisers
(Robinson 2019). Post-communist observers of Russia similarly analyse the country as a former
communist power transitioning towards liberalism in the form of a market economy and democratic
governance. Any disruptions to the liberal path aresubsequently interpreted as a failure to move
beyond Soviet authoritarianism, and the Russian president is assessed through this lensas a former
KGB officer for the Soviet Union. However, Putin rarely cites any socialists or liberals. Rather, Putin
commonly quotes PyotrStolypin,Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ivan Ilyin, and other
social conservatives.Russia is neither returning to its communist past nor following the liberal path of
the West. Instead, Russia is returning to its pre-communist role as a conservative power as a remedy
to its domestic problems and its position in the international system.
Russia has historically been predisposed to be a traditional/spiritual gemeinschaft-based civilisa-
tion due to the large, rural, and remote land-based territory with low physical and economic
connectivity. With similarities to Thomas Jeffersons’ idealised agrarian society, Russia looked upon
Western European manufacturing societies with certain disdain due to signs of decay. Yet, the
encounter with modern Western adversaries through past centuries compelled Russia to modernise
rapidly, resulting in instability due to the destruction of traditional communities. The duality in
human nature manifested itself as geographic identities in Russia as the modernisation in the West
and spirituality of the East produced a European versus Eurasian identity. Radical pendulum shifts
have been sparked by modernisers, which created equal counter-position in the form of two
important movements – Slavophiles and Eurasianists.
Russia has itself been vulnerable to both right-wing and left-wing populism through its history
due to an identity gap between the elites and people. The disconnect between the people and the
elite was exacerbated by Peter the Great’s efforts to make Russia a more European state in the early
18th century. The cosmopolitan and Europeanised elites sought modernity and even preferred to
speak French as the language of culture and high society, which contrasted with the identity of the
peasantrylinked closely to the land and traditions. The Slavophile movement commencing in the
1840s was largely a reaction and balance to the Europeanisation and modernisation of Russia, which
was countered with a devotion to tradition, faith and conservatism (Diesen 2018). Slavophiles can be
conceptualised as populists as they rejected the detached and cosmopolitan elites that expressed
disdain for Russian traditional values. Slavophiles embraced a collectivist Russian identity with focus
on the peasantry, which was a conservative movement sought to preserve traditional communities,
the monarchy, the Orthodox Church and the cultural distinctiveness of Russia (Lieven 1998, 258). The
socialists emerged as a collectivist movement on the left, who also sought to represent the plight
and identity of the peasantry. However, the socialists were revolutionaries andsought to protect the
peasants by uprooting the monarchy, Orthodox Church, and the national identity as repressive
institutions of the state.The challenge for Russia has been to combine the advanced society of
Western Europe, while preserving ‘sobornost’, the spiritual unity and religious communities of Russia
(Khomyakov 1895). Dostoyevsky (1994, 1373)posited:
Just as soon as we become more independent we’ll at once find out what we have to do; but living with Europe
for two centuries we’ve become unaccustomed to any kind of activity and have become windbags and idlers.

In the early 20th century, the socialistrevolutionaries took power rather than the Slavophiles. Much
like the Slavophiles, the socialists came to power on the promise of protecting the peasantry,
although they unleashed destructive campaign against the Russian community as the Orthodox
190 G. DIESEN

Church and nationhood in the effort to create ‘communist Man’ liberated from his past. It is often
neglected in the West that a lot of the frustration and resistance to the Soviet regime derived from
conservatives, rather than liberalism. Uspenskii, a former Red Army commander, lambasted the Left
for betraying Russian culture and spirituality:

Everything connected with the people, its way of life, its faith and religion, all of this is alien to our left-wingers.
Not only do they not accept the faith of the people, but they are also hostile to the most sublime manifestations
of the people’s national spirit. To them Tolstoi is a religious fool, Dostoevskii an obscurantist, even Pushkin
expresses the culture of the nobility. And this is without even mentioning their hatred for all Russian philoso-
phers, from Khomiakov to Bulgakov. For them the Russian historical experience is merely foul soil which has to
be cleared away (Gillespie 1989, 202).

After the failure of communism, Russia began to rediscover and recover its pre-communist traditions
and spirituality.Putin made a forceful conservative pivot in his third term as president. Tsarist history
is rehabilitated, the Orthodox Church is brought back into political and social life, the traditional
family is glorified and awarded monetary benefits, and national culture is promoted as the glue to
unite the multi-ethnic country. Putin reversed liberal policies and steered Russia towards liberal-
conservatism (Sakwa 2007). Much like the conservative nation-state being a vehicle for advancing
liberal ideals, the liberal-conservative tradition enables the state to enact liberal reforms to the extent
they are balanced by conservatism. Russia constructed a memorial devoted to the victims of Stalin,
and commenced with a campaign to rehabilitate Russian conservatives that were removed from the
Russian intellectual landscape by the communists. Putin frequently cites his own hero,PyotrStolypin,
the Prime Minister of Russia from 1906 to 1911, and the conservative and religious philosopher Ivan
Ilyin who was exiledby the Soviet Union. Both Stolypin and Ilyin opined that Russian elites detached
themselves from the Russian people by abandoning Russian ideas to seek a Western path. Putin was
directly involved in organising the reburial Ilyin in Russia.
Russia’s strand of conservatism does not oppose development and change, it merely advocates
a neomodernist path for development that builds on native traditions rather than uprooting the past
(Diesen 2018). Nikolai Berdiaev argued in 1923 that ‘the conservative principle is not by itself
opposed to development, it merely demands that development be organic, that the future not
destroy the past but continue to develop it’ (Robinson 2019, 9).Concurrently, Russia is moving away
from liberal economics to develop strategic industries and restore the social contract with the
people. Vigorous industrial policiesbuild on the economic development policies of Alexander
Hamilton and Friedrich List, which recognised that political sovereignty is dependent on industrial
power. In the late 19th century, Russia industrialised rapidly and became the fastest-growing major
power in the world under the economic policies of Finance Minster Sergey Witte, who based his
policies on the economic nationalism of Hamilton and List. Instead of defining modernisation as
Europeanisation of Russia, the new development strategy of Russia aims to limit foreign influence by
maturing domestic strategic industries, transportation corridors to tie together its vast territory, and
developing new financial instruments (Diesen 2017).Russian social conservatives also advocate that
market efficiency must be balanced with the social responsibilities of the state towards the popula-
tion (Laruelle 2009, 28).
Western liberalism and postmodernism are believed to repeat the mistakes of the communists, as
the effort to create ‘Western Man’, liberated from his past, will produce cultural and spiritual decay.
Russian liberals shared similarities with the Marxistsby believing that embracing liberalism and
democracy could result in ‘transcending classes’ and ‘transcending the nation’ (Lukin 2000, 194).
The debatesregarding the role of traditions to manage change similarly placed liberals and Marxists
in the same camp against conservatives. While Edmund Burke defended the virtues of tradition and
continuity, Thomas Paine rejected the illiberal authority of the past, and Karl Marx similarly argued:
‘the tradition of all dead generations weighs like an alp on the brains of the living’.After the fall of the
authoritarian government of the Soviet Union that Solzhenitsyn despised, he became a devoted
supporter of Vladimir Putin, postulating that unlimited rights would unravel order rather than
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES 191

advance freedom. Solzhenitsyn subsequently called on Russia to develop its own democratic path
and avoid a hasty path towards liberalism and modernity that would leave something important
behind. Sergey Karaganov submitted that Russians and ‘the majority of Europeans’ wanted to be part
of the Europe of Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle that valued European Christian heritage,
and therefore ‘for the next decades, Europe will not be a model that is attractive to Russia’ (Neef
2016). In his own words, Putin (2013a) opined:
We see that many Euro-Atlantic states have taken the way where they deny or reject their own roots, including
their Christian roots which form the basis of Western civilization. In these countries, the moral basis and any
traditional identity are being denied – national, religious, cultural, and even gender identities are being denied
or relativised.

Putin (2013b) recognised that Russia shares a common cause with political forces around the world
that views conservatism as imperative for modernity:
We know that there are more and more people in the world who support our position on defending traditional
values that have made up the spiritual and moral foundation of civilisation in every nation for thousands of
years: the values of traditional families, real human life, including religious life, not just material existence but
also spirituality, the values of humanism and global diversity. Of course, this is a conservative position. But
speaking in the words of Nikolai Berdyaev, the point of conservatism is not that it prevents movement forward
and upward, but that it prevents movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to
a primitive state.

Russia’s international conservatism is also proving to be a powerful instrument for influence in

international affairs. By rejecting liberalism as the sole principal to organise domestic and interna-
tional society, Russia is addressing both the schism in its identity and revising its relationship with the
West. President Putin declared the death of the liberal idea ahead of the G20 meeting in June 2019:
The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority
of the population . . . Deep inside, there must be some fundamental human rules and moral values. In this sense,
traditional values are more stable and more important for millions of people than this liberal idea, which, in my
opinion, is really ceasing to exist (FT 2019).

Shekhovtsov (2017) views Moscow’s link to right-wing populists as a nefarious development rooted
in anti-Western instincts and desire to undermine the liberal-democratic consensus in the West.
However, the pro- versus anti-Western binary narrative neglects that Russia has been seeking
inclusion on the continent and constructing Greater Europe since Gorbachev’s project of
a Common European Home. Both Yeltsin and Putin initially hinted towards Russia’s preparedness
of Russia to join NATO, after the September 11 attacks Moscow attempted to position itself as the
main partner of the US, in 2008 President Medvedev presented the proposalfor a newinclusive
European security architecture, and in 2010 President Putin advocated for an EU-Russian Union. The
rejection of Moscow’s efforts was usually justified by its democratic deficiencies. By constructing
a Europe based on common values rather than compatible values, the West was seen to capitalise on
differences (Möller 2003).Rather than being driven by anti-Western sentiments, the rise of populists
can be seen as an opportunity for Russia to find a common cause with Europe and end dividing lines
on the continent.
In the 1990s, Russia was dismissed as a country with nothing to offer the world in terms of political
philosophy and economic development. Merging security and liberal democracy was untenable as it
legitimised the object-subject or teacher-student relationship with the West, which redefined
cooperation from a mutual compromise of national interests to a socialising or civilising role towards
Russia. Furthermore, European integration was seen to take on a zero-sum format as states in the
shared neighbourhood were expected to decouple from Russia and instead look towards the West
for leadership (Diesen 2016). Accepting liberal democracy as the leading organisational political
philosophy entailed surrendering its leadership in the shared neighbourhood by implicitly support-
ing the notion that Russia and the rest of the post-Soviet space should become more like the West. In
contrast, Russia as an international conservative power creates a gravitational pull towards Western
192 G. DIESEN

states concerned that excessive liberalism and universalism undermines the possibility of replenish-
ing the distinctive and traditional.

The convergence of right-wing populists and social conservative Russia

Prior to communism, Russia was the go-to-country for European classical conservatives. After
defeating Napoleon, Russia scaled back the excesses of the liberal influences of the French
Revolution that manifested itself in both domestic affairs and international system. Disheartened
by the loss of community, spirituality and traditions in industrial society, Russia was commonly
viewed as a balance to excessive liberal developments in Western Europe. Spengler (1991) identified
the spiritual impulses from Russia as a possible source of renewal when the materialistic and
spiritually deprived Europe would eventually fall. Russia was defined as primitive and religious,
though unlike his Russophobic contemporaries, this definition was not derogatory as he defined this
condition as being a civilisation in its youth in contrast to the ageing and decaying West (Spengler
1991). De Maistre, a French philosopher, diplomat, and prominent figure of the Counter-
Enlightenment movement, blamed excessive rationalism and rejection of Christianity for the chaos
in post-revolutionary France. Yet, the ability of Russia to offer the West a rebirth by infusing the
traditional and spiritual back is contested. While de Maistre sought to reach out to Russia as an intact
culture untarnished by modernity, he found that the Russian elites were rapidly emulating what he
considered to be decaying French culture.
Russia is again positioning itself as an international conservative power and thus taking the centre
stage in the crisis of Western liberalism. In Russia, debates about democracy versus authoritarianism
are overshadowed by the more pressing considerations of balancing change with continuity, or
liberalism with conservatism. Populists across the West are subsequently discovering the historical
role of Russia in Europe as a conservative balancer of excessive liberalism.
Populists tend to reject the liberal democratic-authoritarian divide that was established after the
Cold War, and instead, see the fight for civilisation to go along the lines of national-patriotism versus
cosmopolitan-globalism. Populists seek to dethrone a detached establishment that has made their
legitimacy and continuity contingent upon loyalty to cosmopolitism and globalism. Huntington
(2004, 5) argued that ordinary citizens prioritise the preservation of traditional values, national
identity, culture, and manufacturing jobs as the source for national unity. In contrast,
for many elites, these concerns are secondary to participating in the global economy, supporting international
trade and migration, strengthening international institutions, promoting American values abroad, and encoura-
ging minority identities and cultures at home. The central distinction between the public and elites is not
isolationism versus internationalism, but nationalism versus cosmopolitanism.

Patrick Buchanan (2014), the former presidential candidate that also served as a senior advisor to
President Nixon, Ford and Reagan, argued that in contrast to the Cold War, Russia was now on the
right side of history, on the side of God. In an article with the title Is Putin One of Us? Buchanan (2013)
argued in favour of considering Russia as an ally:
As the decisive struggle in the second half of the 20th century was vertical, East vs. West, the 21st century
struggle may be horizontal, with conservatives and traditionalists in every country arrayed against the militant
secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite . . . [Putin] is seeking to redefine the ‘Us vs. Them’ world
conflict of the future as one in which conservatives, traditionalists, and nationalists of all continents and
countries stand up against the cultural and ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent West.

Trump’s reluctance to criticise Putin is explained by Steve Bannon, the first White House Chief
Strategist of the Trump administration who provided the ideological platform during the election
campaign. Bannon identifies as an ‘economic nationalist’ and advocates the return to Hamilton’s
American System since ‘theglobalists gutted the American working class’ (Scher 2017). Bannon
explained that traditionalists have an affinity towards Putin because ‘at least Putin is standing up
for traditional institutions, and he’s trying to do it in a form of nationalism’ (Feder 2016). Roy Moore,
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES 193

who won the Republican primary for the Republican Senate with campaign, posited that America
‘promote[s] a lot of bad things’ with reference to same-sex marriage, and ‘maybe Putin is right’ and
‘maybe he’s more akin to me than I know’ (Delk 2017).
Nigel Farage, the former leader of UKIP and current leader of the Brexit Party, who is often
credited for winning the Brexit referendum, blamed EU and NATO expansionism for the wars in both
Georgia and Ukraine. In France, Le Pen used similar language to argue in favour of closer relations
with Russia, suggesting that ‘the divide is no longer between the right and the left, but between the
patriots and the globalists’ (Noack and Birnbaum 2017).Jean-Luc Melenchon on Left and François
Fillonon the Right similarly sought a more benign approach to Russia.The Russian Orthodox Church
has reached out to French Catholicsto reject the surging LGBT influence on culture and politics
(Laruelle 2018, 10). Salvini, the Deputy Prime Minister of Italy, shed all ambiguity about his senti-
ments towards Russia by entering the European Parliament wearing a t-shirt of Putin, and on a later
occasion proclaimed: ‘I feel at home in Russia in a way that I don’t in other European countries’
(Squires 2018).The dramatic and disruptive rise of the German Right-Wing populist party, Alternative
for Germany (AfD), similarly expresses unapologetically support forRussia and its delegates sparked
outrage by visiting Russian state officials in Crimea.The leader of the Austrian Freedom Party, Norbert
Hofer, similarly condemned the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions.Even Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party
in the Netherlands, who frequently opposes and criticises Russian foreign policy, applauds Putin for
unapologetically serving the national interests of the Russian people.Populist parties commonly
depict Russia as the champion of conservative values and offering an alternative and escape from
‘Merkel’s Europe of the banks’ (Braghiroli and Makarychev2016: 219).
There are even warmer sentiments towards Russia among nationalists and populists in Central
and Eastern Europe, despite the historical grievances towards Russia. The Prime Minister of Hungary,
Victor Orban (2014),called for an illiberal democracy as he argued that Europe had neither geoeco-
nomic competitiveness nor willingness to reproduce the cultural and religious tradition of Europe,
and posits that economic and cultural power of the future is in the east with large illiberal powers
such as China and Russia. In an interview with Valdai Club, the former President of the Czech
Republic, Václav Klaus (2017), summarised the growing sentiment in Europe: ‘behind Germany´s
(and the whole Western Europe´s) policies stand the irrational ideologies of multiculturalism, of
Europeanism, of humanrightism supplemented by plans to create a new European society and a new
European man’. In Poland and the Baltic States the scepticism and hostility towards Russia are shared
by their populists, although they do not share the liberal platform as a common cause to confront
Russia. Moscow finds itself inadvertently in a leading role of a nascent international conservative
movement.

Conclusion
Liberalism has been elevated from being an indispensable component of a society, to become the
sole solution to organise the state and international society. Populism, for all its faults, can be
considered a rebalancing of the liberal with conservatism. Reasserting a balance between liberalism
and conservatism have profound implications both domestically and internationally as it under-
mines the liberal idea as the ideological foundation of the shared identity and unity of the West and
the international order based on liberal hegemony.
The political establishment hassystemic incentives to invoke narratives of Russia as an external
threatto restore solidarity. However, blaming the schisms in the West on Russian conspiracies could
be counter-productive as it threatens to delegitimise the case made by the populists. Furthermore,
Russia’s appeal to the populists is the bold and unapologetic commitment to preserve traditions,
national culture, Christian heritage, national identity, and elevate the family as the most important
institution in society. Moscow itself has also much to gain from embracing the populist movements
as a new political force that offers to normalise relations and end the institutional and ideological
division of Europe.
194 G. DIESEN

The rise of populism should not be considered a domestic aberration or temporary distraction
that can be resolved within the format of liberal globalism. Similarly, the populist wave is not an
external conspiracy akin to the communist threat that can be mitigated by confronting or containing
Russia.While populists do not always have the right answers, their rise derives from a political
vacuum left behind as excessiveliberalism ignores conservative moral codes such as authority and in-
group loyalty. Inclusion, human rights and even democracy has in the past and will in the future
require some constraints to the extent it undermines the authority of traditional institutions.
Populism can be considered a corrective mechanism to the excesses of liberalism, although the
populists themselves may be unsavoury and lack clear answers. As Frum notes, ‘when liberals insist
that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals won’t do’
(Frum 2017).Similarly, when liberals insist that the market is completely self-regulating, then the
economic and societal imbalances will be addressed by more assertive and even radical economic
nationalists. The neoliberal consensus that underpins the collective identity of the West paradoxi-
cally causes division that can be resolved by restoring political pluralism that accommodated moral
and ideological diversity.
Addressing the disruption to the so-called liberal international order similarly presents opportu-
nities to create a more durable and stable system. The puritan and absolutist approach to developing
aliberal society may incrementally narrow the membership of the West.Even Poland and Hungary
may be excluded as they define Europe by ethno-cultural and religious traditions as opposed to
solely civic virtues such as human rights and democracy. Even within the staunchest supporters of
liberal globalism, such as Germany, the decoupling of liberalism from the traditional nation-state is
polarising society between adherence to either the distinctive or the universal. The zero-sum
relationship between the West and Russia can also be mitigated by restoring embedded liberalism
within the political and economic space. Accommodating greater pluralism by replacing common
values with compatible values soften the dividing lines in Europe that reduce the strength and
relevance of the continent. Lastly, even liberalism itself could be saved by accepting greater political
and ideological pluralism as liberalism dies in victory.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID
Glenn Diesen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9343-6353

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