Putin’s Totalitarian Democracy: Ideology, Myth, and Violence in the Twenty-First Century

256 Pages·2019·2.478 MB·English

by  Kate C. Langdon, Vladimir Tismaneanu

Putin’s Totalitarian
Democracy
Ideology, Myth,
and Violence in the
Twenty-First Century
kate c. langdon
vladimir tismaneanu
Putin’s Totalitarian Democracy
Kate C. Langdon • Vladimir Tismaneanu
Putin’s Totalitarian
Democracy
Ideology, Myth, and Violence
in the Twenty-First Century
Kate C. Langdon Vladimir Tismaneanu
Crofton, MD, USA University of Maryland
College Park, MD, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-20578-2 ISBN 978-3-030-20579-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20579-9
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
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In memory of both
Walter Laqueur,
historian and critical intellectual
(26 May 1921–30 September 2018),
and
Jacob L. Talmon,
political scientist and critical intellectual
(14 June 1916–16 June 1980),
and to
the victims of totalitarian domination
and those who fight against it.
A
cknowledgments
Our book owes a substantial debt to several mentors, friends, and family.
First, I, Kate C. Langdon, maintain a profound appreciation and admira-
tion for Dr. Mark Hoffman, who went above and beyond his professorial
duties as my thesis advisor at Vassar College. Without his trust and encour-
agement, I would not have pursued my unorthodox research on the topic
of Putinism and authoritarianism in Russia. I thank Dr. Stephen Rock
from Vassar College as well; not only did he agree to act as the second
reader for my tome of a thesis, but he also offered criticisms that have
much improved the themes of the original text. Both Vassar professors
encouraged me to expand it into a book for publication.
Much gratitude must be expressed to my co-author Dr. Vladimir
Tismaneanu. His passion for truth and humanity is boundless, as is his
wealth of knowledge. To study under someone for whom scholarship is a
way of life, not just a career, is truly humbling. Dr. Tismaneanu’s work
heavily influenced my original project, and I found it an amazing experi-
ence to revamp that work into a professional publication alongside his
active collaboration over the past year. Likewise, I convey my deep thanks
to Dr. Piotr Kosicki from the University of Maryland, College Park, who
volunteered to read 200 pages written by a student he hardly knew at the
time. His genuine interest in students’ ideas, in what others might write
off as “just undergraduate” work, is sorely absent from so many educa-
tional institutions.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As for Jordan Luber, no words are fit to describe his contributions. Like
the number of hours he spent reviewing and helping to conceptualize my
contribution to this co-authored work, his belief in both the cause of
human dignity and me is endless.
Second, I, Vladimir Tismaneanu, wish to pay tribute here to my friends
Karen Dawisha (1949–2018) and Alvin Z. Rubinstein (1927–2001), both
distinguished scholars of Soviet and post-Soviet affairs as well as models of
intellectual acumen and moral intelligence. Additionally, I would like to
share that co-authoring this book with Kate Langdon and benefitting
from Jordan Luber’s insightful suggestions have been enriching experi-
ences. There is nothing a professor can find more rewarding than sharing
and elaborating ideas in collaboration with such young and truly brilliant
students. Moreover, 2018 was quite a difficult year for me in terms of
health. It was first and foremost thanks to my wife, Mary Sladek, and our
son, Adam Volo Tismaneanu, that I managed to overcome the vexing
circumstances and return to my normal life as a teacher, a scholar, and—to
use Raymond Aron’s formulation—an engaged spectator.
c
ontents
1 Recentering Putinism 1
Debunking the “Putin Phenomenon” and Recentering Putinism 4
Challenges to Putinism and the Survival of Historical Trends 17
Brief Chapter Outline 22
References 30
2 The Inheritance of an Autocratic Legend 35
The Basis of Tsarist Rule: Absolute Power in Exchange for Border
Protection 36
Leninism Continues the Autocratic Legacy 40
The Ghost of Autocracy Haunts Modern Russia 44
References 50
3 E nter “the Hero” 55
The Dresden Connection 58
After the Soviet Fall 61
Apartment Bombings and the Need for a National Savior 63
War as a Distracting and Mobilizing Force 65
Recognizing the Need for the People’s Approval 67
Shaking the Unshakeable: Crises of the Economy and Legitimacy 71
References 77
ix
x CONTENTS
4 The Intellectual Origins of Putinism 83
What Is Ideology? 85
Ideology and Blurring: The Progression into Totalitarianism 88
Intellectual Origins of Putinism and Beyond 90
Putin the Opportunist, or Putin the Believer? 97
References 108
5 Putinism as a Culture in the Making 113
The Security Imaginary: A Domestic Tool for Defining the
Russian National Identity 115
Nostalgia for the Soviet Paradise 117
A One-Sided State of Perpetual War 121
Russia as a Victim 123
Rewriting History Around Russian Exceptionalism 125
Russia as the Superior Culture 128
Biopolitics and Racism: Self-Other Distinctions and Identity 131
Putinism and the Specter of Homo Sovieticus 137
References 148
6 Russian Nationalism in Education, the Media, and Religion 153
Ideology and Youth Education in Russia 155
Ideology and the Media in Russia 157
Ideology and Religion in Russia 161
How Individuals Reproduce the Kremlin’s Ideology 165
References 183
7 Russian Foreign Policy: Freedom for Whom, to Do What? 189
Putin’s Foreign Policy, the “Near Abroad,” and Beyond 192
The Case of Ukraine and Expanding Biopolitics 195
The Case of Syria and Exaggerating Russia’s Role in Global
Anti-Terrorism 201
Foreign Policy and the Internal Policing of the Enemy 205
References 219
8 The New Dark Times 225
References 242
Index 245
A A
bout the uthors
Kate C. Langdon is an Erasmus Mundus scholar. She has studied in the
United States, Russia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Poland.
She holds an M.A. from the European Politics and Society: Václav Havel
Programme, led by Charles University in Prague. Previously, she
received her Bachelor of Arts degree in both Political Science and
Russian Studies at Vassar College, New York, and was inducted into
Phi Beta Kappa. Langdon also interned for the U.S. Department of
State in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Budapest, Hungary, during the summers of
2015 and 2016, respectively.
Vladimir Tismaneanu is a professor in the Department of Government
and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, United States,
and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars. In addition to regularly contributing to the Romanian-Moldovan
branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, he has authored numerous
books, including The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some
Lessons of the Twentieth Century (2012). Together with Romanian political
scientist Marius Stan, he most recently co-authored Romania Confronts
Its Communist Past: Democracy, Memory, and Moral Justice (2018).
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