“Russian World” – the ideology of modern fascism
Putin's dictatorship unleashed the largest war in the last 80 years – this is a real mafia structure with a leader at the head, which has been formed over the past twenty years during the rule of a dictator in Russia. On the windfall profits from the sale of primarily energy resources and the redistribution of finances and assets between Putin’s close associates and childhood friends, the “Lake Cooperative” was formed.
Billions and even trillions of dollars were plundered past the budget and settled with Putin's cronies, transferred offshore, castles were built. When Putin came to power, for some time he positioned himself as a democrat, being neither by conviction, nor by upbringing, nor by education, and naturally, he was not a bearer of values and meanings, the center of which were the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens, but during the first years of his reign, he adhered to the course of his predecessor. In fact, under his predecessor, President Yeltsin, despite the bloody war in Chechnya and the shelling of the Parliament building, there were liberal politicians and certain freedoms in the country, including relatively independent media and television, which were owned by oligarchs and entrepreneurs. There was no total propaganda and state control over the mass media.
Russia was an oligarchic country, where the power of the oligarchs and their clans, partly merged with the power structures, was not inferior to the power of President Yeltsin and his government. Certain freedoms and the beginnings of democracy existed, rallies of dissenters were held and there was criticism of the authorities at all levels. Moreover, Yeltsin maintained friendly relations with Western politicians and was going to integrate Russia into Western civilization. Putin, having come to power, gradually took control of both the media and the billions in revenues of the Russian oligarchy, eliminating some of them physically, putting some in prison, replacing the Yeltsin oligarchs with his friends. There was no intelligible ideology during the first years of his reign, and much went by inertia, as during the reign of Yeltsin.
But he needed some kind of ideology for the population, which would unite the citizens of Russia around him. Not surprisingly, the mafia focuses not on democracy or any other values, but on its power, super incomes, and a luxurious life with palaces, pitchforks, and yachts. He needed a dictatorship, with the help of which he could remain the ruler of the country until the end of his life and enjoy unlimited power and power. In a democratic society, with an active civil society, in the presence of real opposition, such a scenario of autocracy and autocracy would be impossible. The Russian population, accustomed to living under the USSR, preaching socialism and hatred for the capitalist system, needed to believe in something, otherwise, the hatred would spread along class lines to Putin and his oligarchic and corrupt entourage. It was necessary to form images of an internal and external enemy and play the role of a savior of Russia, diverting the attention of Russians from total corruption and their own regime. As energy prices soared to their peak on the world market, the Russian budget earned trillions of dollars from the sale of gas and oil, and some went to the people.
The standard of living of the population increased compared to the hungry 90s, people lived much better and were satisfied with Putin's power, considering all this to be his personal merit. In this way, Putin was gaining political popularity and the sympathy of the Russians, he had all the cards in his hands for curtailing the beginnings of democratic freedoms in Russia and destroying the civil society and opposition that had been formed under Yeltsin. In order to unite the population around his power, Putin unleashed a second Chechen campaign, starting with explosions in Moscow and Volgodonsk and blaming Chechen fighters for this. Thus, for some time, the image of an internal enemy was invented and the frightened population silently watched the formation of a dictatorial regime, because Putin was already perceived as a strong leader and savior of their peaceful life.
The fear of death at the hands of terrorists is a strong enough motivator and the Putin regime was forgiven for everything, including the total corruption of officials, lawlessness on the part of the security forces, and the lack of democracy. It should be borne in mind that democracy has never existed in Russia and all political regimes were autocratic in one way or another: whether it was tsarism in the Russian Empire or leaderism in the USSR or an earlier system of government under Peter І and his predecessors, Russian power was always on the verge of tyranny and the Russians habitually tolerated such power.
Slavish submission to strong power is part of the mental code of Russians, which is why most Russians choose leaderism, not freedom.
These traditions have a long history, and over the last 70 years of the existence of the USSR, the struggle against the market capitalist system, democracy and Western civilization in general has been the core of ideology Soviet people, along with building socialism and communism. In order to activate this mental code of Russian hatred for the West, it was only necessary to once again declare the West an enemy of Russia and launch an irrational mechanism for perceiving an external enemy, built on xenophobia.
The Rose Revolution in early 2000 in Georgia and The Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the announcement by the leaders of the revolutions of the Western vector of development of their countries and integration into the EU and NATO, caused Putin's undisguised aggression, who considered these countries to be his zone of influence. In the information space of the Russian Federation in the media and on television, there was still no active exaggeration of the ideology of the “Russian World”, but the Kremlin's ideological struggle with the West is already beginning, in which the emphasis is on a new enemy – globalism. Western globalism and globalists are declared the main enemies of Russia, many articles appear in the press condemning Soros, first of all, as the main financier of democratic revolutions around the world, and Western politicians are declared accomplices in the promotion of Western values in the post-Soviet space. There are discussions about the threat from NATO, while Western countries are still officially partners of the Russian Federation.
Hysteria begins associated with the so-called traditional values of Russia, opposing them to European values. A campaign against LGBT communities begins, eyes are turned a blind eye to the emergence of openly right-wing Russian ultranationalists who preach the ideology of neo-fascism (the so-called Limonovites), since they are seen as strongholds of the fight against liberalism. The influence of the Orthodox Church, which is in the service of the Kremlin, is also growing, religious sects and organizations are banned, the largest and most influential of them being Jehovah's Witnesses.
Articles of the ideologue of Russian chauvinism and imperialism, Professor Dugin, appear in the Russian press. Starting in 1994, he spoke with his frankly imperialist ideas to the students of Moscow State University, but his ideas did not reach the scale in those years. In 2007, during his speech at the Munich Conference, Putin announced that the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century was the collapse of the USSR. This became an open intention to publicly restore the empire. In 2008, Russia attacked little Georgia and occupied part of its territory. 2008 can be considered the starting point for the aggressive restoration of the Russian Empire through war. Most of the neo-liberal governments of the West in the 1980s, based on the ideas of the leading representative of this school, the American economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, made this paradigm their guiding political principle. The absence of restrictions instead of state control, the liberalization of trade and capital movements, the privatization of state-owned enterprises - this is the component of this paradigm based on the world market and international economic organizations influenced by: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization.
Conventionally, such a model can be called American, and naturally, both in the economic and political aspects, the Putin regime had to oppose something to the United States and the entire West, wanting to return the role of world leader to Russia. During the Cold War, the second world pole was the USSR with its planned economy and the ideology of socialism, which controlled almost all of Eastern Europe. Without a new ideological base, it was difficult for the Putin regime to justify to the Russians the Kremlin's opposition to Western civilization and its values, being a corrupt but no less capitalist country than any other Western state. Thus, a peculiar mix of Soviet braces, the cult of victory-madness (a nation of winners) and imperial chauvinism with hatred for democratic freedoms and liberal values of the West began to form. For obvious reasons, the Putin regime was not going to abolish the capitalist system, because he and his cronies lived like real tsars, enjoying all the privileges of rich people with unlimited power and stolen capital. The Kremlin power, seized by the special services, was a real mafia, but as we have already found out, one more component that the USSR possessed was missing, that powerful ideological base that could rally the population around acceptable ideological values and the Kremlin elite led by Putin for a long time. The ideology of the “Russian world”, according to Putin's plan, was to replace both the socialist ideology and the democratic Western one. This was the beginning of the formation of the fascist and imperial regime in Russia.
As I wrote above, one of the ideologists of the Russkiy Mir, Alexander Dugin, has long proposed to the Putin regime to irrevocably and forever break with the West by starting a tough confrontation with it. Not only the ideologist of the “Russian World” Dugin, but also a huge number of Russian politicians openly offered to conquer Ukraine and Belarus if the latter did not want to voluntarily become part of the Russian Federation, as well as to seize several regions of Kazakhstan inhabited by the so-called Russian-speaking population. The war with the NATO countries and the capture of the Baltic states was also considered. Dugin, as an ideologue of Russian fascism, is aware that without an ideological base, many Russians who are accustomed to European life and perceive European values as their own (especially urban youth aged 18-24) will sooner or later be disappointed in Putin and a protest movement may begin up to before the overthrow of power. In one of his last articles, Dugin writes: “Russia is inevitably moving to an ideological stage. Without a full-fledged original ideology, we will not survive the confrontation with the West. The ideologization of Russia is inevitable, it is impossible to prevent it”. The ideas of Dugin, as well as another odious ideologist of the "Russian World" Prokhorov, are clearly of a fascist sense and are a kind of ideas of the “Third Reich”. Similar thoughts are expressed by other ideologists of the Russkiy Mir in the Russian press and on television. Nikolai Starikov has written several books on Russian imperialism and has long called for the return of the Russian Empire to at least 1991 borders by starting a violent confrontation with Western civilization.
In 2014, Starikov’s book “Geopolitics How It Is Done” was published, throughout the book the logic of opposition and war with the West is preserved, the book ends with his call to return all the former republics of the USSR to the Russian Empire. All these ideologists of Russian fascism believe that Russia's place is not in the West, but in Eurasia, in order to mentally and culturally tear Russians away from their former life oriented towards Europe. A new vector of development is being prescribed, oriented primarily to the East – BRIGs and the SCO. There is an attempt to build relations against the West with China, India, Africa, Latin America, Iran, Arab countries and even Turkey, – so the ideologists of the “Russian World” say.
Each country has the right to choose where to move and with whom to conclude alliances, but what does Ukraine have to do with it?
Ukraine has chosen the European vector of development. Starting a full-scale war with Ukraine, deciding to conquer and occupy the territory of an independent state, a clear aggressive move to the West. After Ukraine, it would be the turn of Moldova and the Baltic countries. Ukraine, as a European and democratic state, has chosen its own course of development, oriented towards the EU and NATO, like some other republics of the former USSR.
It is curious that after the start of the war with Ukraine, Putin's rating grew by 12% and crossed the line of 80% support for the Russians, but after several months of the war, the leader's rating began to decline despite the frantic propaganda. The Kremlin decided to test the mood of the Russians for the opportunity to start a full mobilization and put the country on a war footing, as Hitler did in the 30s of the last century. Recently, by order of the Russian government, a social survey was conducted among the population in relation to the unleashed war against Ukraine, which the Putin regime calls a special operation. The cessation of the war against Ukraine is most actively supported by Russians, aged 18-24 – 56%, of which only 19% support the continuation of the war. 43% of Russians aged 25-34 support the end of hostilities, and 41% are in favor of continuing. The most active supporters of the war are people over 60 years of age. Among them, 72% were in favor of extending the massacres.
Based on the results of a social survey, we can conclude that the most aggressive are Russians, former citizens of the USSR, who have a Soviet mentality and hate both the West and democracy in Ukraine. Young people who grew up under the influence of Western culture are generally peaceful and do not see the enemy in either Ukrainians or Europeans. First of all, we are talking about the youth of large megacities, marginalized youth from the remote provinces are ready to fight anyone for money, because they vegetate and are not distinguished by high intelligence and critical thinking. According to statistics, this is 19%, the figure is not critical, but it is quite enough for cannon fodder to join the ranks of their criminal army. We do not know if Putin will conduct a general mobilization in Russia, but, apparently, he is going to fight for a long time. Not long ago, Putin said that Russia had not even started yet, meaning that it would soon begin to fight at full power. In fact, the Russian army has been fighting at full power for a long time, but it receives a fitting rebuff from the Armed Forces of Ukraine and Putin has nothing to brag about great victories.
Most likely, the Russian dictator can start a protracted war, hoping to suppress the will of Ukrainians with rocket attacks on peaceful cities and civilian infrastructure, falling living standards and endless stress, since life in war cannot be a normal phenomenon for the human psyche. Perhaps he also hopes that the West is tired of confrontation with Russia and of helping Ukraine. In this civilizational conflict, the Putin regime will definitely lose if the collective West does not disperse to its own apartment, counting the bookkeeping and stop providing military assistance to Ukrainians fighting not only for their independence and sovereignty, but also restraining the aggressor from further attacks on European countries. “Russian world” in Putin's way is reduced to his statement: “They are in the cemetery, and we are in paradise”. He and his entourage are a party of rabid fascists who want to defeat Ukraine and Western civilization at any cost, even considering nuclear strikes on “control centers”, as they call Zelensky’s office and the leading Western countries – the USA and Great Britain. Putin has already lost control of himself and the situation by failing to defeat the Ukrainians on the battlefield, giving orders to bomb peaceful cities and civilian infrastructure with rockets. Rocket strikes are increasingly targeting civilian Ukrainians.
People come under rocket fire both in shops or on the street, and while sitting in their apartments. Increasingly, women and children are being killed by cruise missiles. Russia is becoming a terrorist state. USSR-2 will not take place, Ukrainians will defend their country and their families against Putin's wishes. The aggressor country is terrorizing Ukraine with missile strikes carried out from a safe distance, either from Russian or Belarusian territory, or from submarines, or from military aircraft that are in the zone of inaccessibility of Ukrainian air defense. Putin acts like a classic terrorist, giving orders to hit civilian targets with no military significance.
The “Russian world” has long become a world of terror and violence, dictatorship and totalitarianism, and no self-respecting person wants to live in such a world, since Russia has turned into a fascist invader and murderers of peaceful Ukrainians. Of course, the sanctions imposed on Russia by the European Union, the United States and other countries are gradually corroding the economy of the occupying country and hitting its leadership. But Putin's agents of influence are also working harmoniously all over the world, both in Europe and in the United States, spreading Russian propaganda and justifying Putin and his crimes.
For 20 years of his time in power, Putin, being a former KGB officer, managed to build corrupt schemes and bribe a number of high-ranking Western officials, while blackmail and all kinds of scandals are used against other intractable ones to undermine the rating and authority of politicians and officials who are not friendly to his regime. Hybrid wars and blackmail are also a well-established system called the “Russian world”. Taking into account the 21st century and those opportunities that Hitler did not have, Russian fascism is modernized and disguised, hiding its anti-human essence with various fakes and propaganda. With the help of a total lie, the Kremlin elite is trying to evade responsibility for the crimes committed. None of their war crimes have been recognized, but justice must prevail, and the perpetrators of these monstrous atrocities must sit in the dock in The Hague.
So what kind of ideology did Putinism create in the language of psychology?
Putin and his entourage created the ideology of slavery, calling it the “Russian world”. Rather, they even continued the ideology of Hitler and Stalin, based on the suppression of the will of their citizens, the formation of fanaticism and violence, and the animal fear of death.
Fear has lived in Russia for centuries and gives rise to pain, darkness, hunger, ignorance, deceit, immorality, drunkenness! This is the tyranny of the strong and the insignificance of the weak! It is the willingness to humiliate and the need to humiliate! But it was under Putin that he reached his apogee. Fear under Putin is the mafia and Russian fascism, which stands not on the strength of a handful of mafia politicians, but on the impotence of millions of Russians paralyzed by fear. Fear is Putin's executioner, who failed to cope with the recalcitrant and freedom-loving Ukrainians, and the same fear greatly frightened the Europeans, many of whom thought to sit back and return everything to normal, pretending that nothing had happened.
After all, cheap hydrocarbons from Russia and a sales market, joint business with the Putin regime and a well-fed life are more important than freedom and democracy, honor and dignity, and the death of tens of thousands of Ukrainians, women and children. This is the vice that Putin was counting on when he started the war against Ukraine. The name of this vice is selfishness and indifference. It is this vice that is more monstrous than fear. It is this vice that is capable of destroying all of humanity, not nuclear warheads. Good that fails to unite against evil will lose, real good has no fear, because the strength of the spirit, love, humanity and justice is the strength that is called “reasonable man” and that is why humanity has survived.
Conclusions
Russian fascism must be defeated at any cost, and the “Russian world” must disappear, like the German Reich once did. Putin and his mafia must suffer a crushing defeat so that the rest of the world lives without rockets and bombs falling on civilians, so that happy young couples walk hand in hand through free Europe, and Ukrainians after the Victory rebuild their cities and return to peaceful life in their own countries at home. Putin's “Russian World” is the insane desire of a handful of mafiosi to control the whole world and dictate their own rules of the game to it. Neither Hitler nor Stalin managed to impose their will on the entire civilized world even by unleashing the Second World War. Since we are dealing with a mafioso who thinks in terms of a professional criminal, and not just a president, leader, tsar, and so on, Putin will be afraid of those who are stronger and braver than him. That's all there is to know about Putin's “Russian World”.