Putinism
This is reflected in incremental but steady and aggressive process of the seizing of full control over public and private life, and de facto criminalization of any opposition and dissidence.
"[53][54] "Under Russian Federation President and former career foreign intelligence officer Vladimir Putin, an "FSB State" composed of chekists has been established and is consolidating its hold on the country.
In a world marked by a globalized economy and information infrastructure, and with transnational terrorism groups utilizing all available means to achieve their goals and further their interests, Russian intelligence collaboration with these elements is potentially disastrous", said politologist Julie Anderson.
"[58] Russian politician Boris Nemtsov and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza defined Putinism in 2004 as "a one party system, censorship, a puppet parliament, ending of an independent judiciary, firm centralization of power and finances, and hypertrophied role of special services and bureaucracy, in particular in relation to business".
[57] In 2010, Peter Sucia, an American historian and The National Interest contributor, was one of the first publicists to explicitly describe Putin as a leader who is sincerely convinced in his fascist values as righteous.
"[69] The historian Timothy Snyder and other authors note that pro-Fascist ultranationalist white émigré Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin has been quoted by Vladimir Putin in his speeches on various occasions, and is considered by some observers to be a major ideological inspiration for him.
[70][71] And Aleksandr Dugin, a formerly marginal contemporary apologist for Eurasianism and conservative revolution, whose views are close to Fascism, has become a semi-official philosopher of the Putin regime[72][73] and headed 2023 establishment the Ivan Ilyin Higher School of Politics at the Russian State University for the Humanities.
In February 2021, Putin linked his own personal thought and ideology to that of Lev Gumilyov, stating that he too believed in 'passionarity', the rise and fall of societies as described by this theory and specifically that Russia was a nation 'has not yet attained its highest point', with an 'infinite genetic code'.
[74][75][76] According to Michael Hirsh, a senior correspondent at Foreign Policy: Graham and other Russia experts said it is a mistake to view Putin merely as an angry former KGB apparatchik upset at the fall of the Soviet Union and NATO’s encroachment after the Cold War, as he is often portrayed by Western commentators.
... Putin is rather a messianic Russian nationalist and Eurasianist whose constant invocation of history going back to Kievan Rus, however specious, is the best explanation for his view that Ukraine must be part of Russia’s sphere of influence, experts say.
American historian Stanley G. Payne argued that Putin's political system is "more a revival of the creed of Tsar Nicholas I in the 19th century that emphasized 'Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality' than one resembling the revolutionary, modernizing regimes of Hitler and Mussolini.
[86] Pro-Fascist ultranationalist white émigré Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin has been quoted by Vladimir Putin in his speeches on various occasions, and is considered by some observers to be a major ideological inspiration for him.
[72][73] Russian journalist Andrei Malgin compared Putin's desire to restore a "lost" empire and his support for the church and "traditional values" to the policies of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini.
American historian Stanley G. Payne argued that Putin's political system is "more a revival of the creed of Tsar Nicholas I in the 19th century that emphasized 'Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality' than one resembling the revolutionary, modernizing regimes of Hitler and Mussolini.
Ethnic nationalists are critical of Putin's immigration policy, which allows migration of millions of people from post-Soviet Central Asia and Caucasus to Russia's traditionally Slavic heartland.
[88] According to Robert Horvath of La Trobe University, during the 1990s, when Russia saw waves of racist violence and Putin became president in 2000, his regime exploited this threat to introduce anti-extremism legislation that was also used to target pro-democracy and left-wing activists.
[90] A number of far-right politicians and parties in the European Union have been linked with Putin, including Marine Le Pen,[91][92] Matteo Salvini,[93] and parts of the Alternative for Germany.
[96][97] Richard Shorten of the University of Birmingham has stated that Putin "has been appealing, not just for extreme 'manosphere' white supremacists, but also for more 'mainstream' western reactionaries attracted by an unapologetic social conservatism.
He criticized the Bolshevik efforts, based on "dogmas of Marx and Engels", to change not just political and economic customs, but also "the very notion of human morality and the foundations of a healthy society".
He criticized the Bolsheviks for masquerading as "progress" the "destruction of age-old values, religion and relations between people, up to and including the total rejection of family, encouragement to inform on loved ones", and said that these patterns were repeated in the modern West.
[103] In May 2000, The Guardian wrote: "When a band of former Soviet dissidents declared in February that Putinism was nothing short of modernised Stalinism, they were widely dismissed as hysterical prophets of doom.
'Authoritarianism is growing harsher, society is being militarised, the military budget is increasing,' they warned, before calling on the West to 're-examine its attitude towards the Kremlin leadership, to cease indulging it in its barbaric actions, its dismantlement of democracy and suppression of human rights.'
[104] In February 2007, Arnold Beichman, a conservative research fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote in The Washington Times that "Putinism in the 21st century has become as significant a watchword as Stalinism was in the 20th".
It has been also noted that these segments of the international pro-Soviet left have distaste towards the post-Soviet Eastern Europeans states which Putin's Russia has engaged in conflicts with because these countries rejected the Soviet rule as "colonial".
[126] Cécile Vaissié, author of The Kremlin Networks, considers Jean-Luc Mélenchon as "one of those that approve of Putin",[127] and Yannick Jadot of EELV said that the "pro-Russia" stance is "contrary to any environment thinking".
[137][138] Wagenknecht opposed sanctions against Russia over the 2022 invasion, and, in a speech in September 2022, accused the German government of "launching an unprecedented economic war against our most important energy supplier".
[141] The Slovak political party Smer holds Russophilic and Eurosceptic stances on foreign policy; however, it claims to support Slovakia's membership in the European Union and NATO.
[158][159] Faith Hillis of the University of Chicago has argued that Putin "wants to reconstitute the Russian Empire and its guiding ideologies, which were orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality—except now, under the power of a very sophisticated police state.
[172] Cihan Tugal of the University of California, Berkeley has described Putin's view of history as one "where Ukraine and the other nations of the USSR are communist artefacts, and only Russia is real and natural".
[173] Naomi Klein has argued that Putin has been motivated in part by "a desire to overcome the shame of punishing economic shock therapy imposed on Russia at the end of the Cold War".
