The People, Values, and the State:

How Vladimir Putin’s Views on Ideology

Evolved

DENYS KIRYUKHIN*
(The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)

SVITLANA SHCHERBAK**
(The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)

Abstract
The main goal of this article is to analyze the evolution of Vladimir Putin’s understanding of the
role of ideology in the Russian political system. This research, based on a discourse analysis of
Putin’s addresses, articles, speeches, and interviews, allowed us to reconstruct the Russian
President’s views on sovereignty, the Russian state, “the people” and their unity, and trace the
emergence of Putinism as a specific ideology directed against the liberal world order. Our study
demonstrates that Putin’s approach to ideology has undergone a difficult transformation from
abandoning state ideology to its de facto revival. Giving ideology formal legal status by amending
the Russian Constitution in 2020 was the logical conclusion of the evolution of Putin’s views. The
public protests that swept through post-Soviet countries played a big role in this evolution
because Putin perceived them as a threat to national sovereignty. This article shows that Putin’s
pursuit of ideological policy serves two main goals: protecting Russia’s sovereignty, which
involves not just building effective protection against external influence on Russia, but also
reformatting the system of international relations so that the possibility of this influence can be
eliminated and providing “national unity” and loyalty to the regime.

Keywords: Putin, ideology, Russia, sovereign democracy, conservative turn.

Introduction
This article analyzes the evolution of Vladimir Putin’s view of ideology
by focusing on the discourses of the Russian president in the period 1999-2019.

* Denys Kiryukhin is a Research Fellow at the Department of Social Philosophy,

H. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy, The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
(denys.kiryukhin@gmail.com).
** Svitlana Shcherbak is a Research Fellow at the Department of Social Philosophy,
H. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy, The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
(svedep4@gmail.com).

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10 DENYS KIRYUKHIN, SVITLANA SHCHERBAK

This study reveals the changes of Putin’s views on the role of ideology within
Russia’s political system that resulted in the emergence of Putinism as a
specific ideology directed against the liberal world order. At the same time, we
have found out that the ideological core of Putin’s worldview has not changed.
It includes ideas about the connection between the state and the nation,
sovereignty, and national unity. According to our hypothesis, progressive
ideologization of the Russian political system under Putin came in response to
the public civil activity.
The methodology used is that of discourse analysis as it was proposed by
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and further developed by Marianne
Jørgensen and Louise Phillips as well as other researchers.1 Political
construction is inevitably involved in particular contexts, as meanings shift
between social and political settings, but the advantage of the discourse analysis
approach is that it conceives of discourse as a synonym for social practice.2 As a
research methodology, this approach pays attention to structural characteristics,
attempting to “identify patterns and regularities in the construction and
alteration of discourses.”3 In other words, discourse analysis makes it possible
to take social and political contexts into account and track the dynamics of their
interaction with political discourse. The discourse analysis of Vladimir Putin’s
articles, addresses, speeches and interviews enabled us to reconstruct the nodal
points of the Russian president’s political discourse, forming a stable core of his
views, and to detect the semantic drift of signifiers by reconstructing their
practical context.
This article is based on the analysis of fifteen Annual Addresses of the
President of the Russian Federation to the Federal Assembly from the periods
2000 – 2007 and 2012 – 2019. However, Vladimir Putin does not touch on
issues related to ideology in all these addresses. Therefore, we identified three
addresses (2005, 2007 and 2013) where these topics are present and analyzed
them. Second, on the eve of the presidential elections, Putin has traditionally
published program articles. We studied the Russian President’s articles for the
period 1999 to 2018 and identified one article from 1999 and two from 2012
that deal with issues of national history, national identity, cultural and the
spiritual foundations of the Russian state. Thirdly, we analyzed the reports the
Russian president made at the meeting of the Valdai International Club,
particularly in 2013 and 2018. Finally, we analyzed the speeches that Putin

1 Marianne Jørgensen and Louise L. Phillips, Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method
(London: SAGE Publications, 2002), https://doi.org/10.4135/9781849208871.
2 Margaret Wetherell, “Debates in Discourse Research,” in Discourse Theory and Practice:
A Reader, eds. Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie Taylor and Simeon S. Yates (London:
Sage, 2001), 389.
3 Martin Müller, “Doing Discourse Analysis in Critical Geopolitics,” L’Espace Politique
12, no. 3 (2010): 1-18, https://doi.org/10.4000/espacepolitique.1743.

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The People, Values, and the State: How Vladimir Putin’s Views on Ideology Evolved 11

made during his presidency in connection with important historical dates and
state events. For our study, the two most important are the so-called Crimean
Speech (i.e., Address by the President of the Russian Federation in 2014 and
Putin’s speech on Victory Day in 2019). As will be shown below, the Russian
leader makes an ideological turn in these speeches. In addition to Putin’s texts,
articles published by the leaders of Putin’s party, “United Russia,” and those
written by Vladislav Surkov are also part of our study. During the period from
1999 to 2020, Vladislav Surkov worked in various positions in the
Administration of the President of the Russian Federation and as an assistant to
the President. He was one of the creators of the term “sovereign democracy,”
and the author of articles on the ideology of Putinism.
In what follows, the article first recalls how Putin’s approach of ideology
has been studied and which is the position this study takes. Thereafter, we
clarify the meaning given to the concept of ideology in this article. Moreover,
by reconstructing the practical contexts of political discourse, we also relied on
sociological data, in particular on the dynamics of Putin’s popularity, given that
the Russian president himself pays close attention to the authorities’ approval
ratings, which he apparently believes to be indicative of civil consensus.

Literature Review: The Crystallization of Putinism

Analyzing Vladimir Putin’s approach to ideology is no trivial task. The

ideological narrative the Russian power developed is self-contradictory, and
Putin himself avoids conceptual certainty, while the people surrounding him
have a range of ideological views, from liberal to conservative.
There are at least two approaches to understanding Putin’s ideology. The
first disputes the very existence of it. For example, Mark Galeotti claims that
Putin is devoid of any ideology, while his tendency to cite the names of Russian
conservative philosophers in certain of his speeches does not give grounds for
concluding that he shares their views.4 The Crimean Speech (2014) is perhaps
the only case to date in which the ideas of the Russian conservatism
theoreticians occupy a prominent place in the text extremely significant to the
Russian President.5 Masha Gessen rightly draws attention to this speech, stating
that having mobilized the Russian nation, Crimea has come to constitute
Russian ideology.6 Yet regarding Putin’s ideology, Gessen is rather inclined to

4 Mark Galeotti, We Need to Talk About Putin: Why the West Gets Him Wrong, and How to
Get Him Right (London: Ebury Publishing, 2019), 160.
5 Address by President of the Russian Federation, March 18, 2014, accessed March 31,
2021, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/20603.
6 Masha Gessen, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (London:
Granta BoGryizlovoks, 2017).

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12 DENYS KIRYUKHIN, SVITLANA SHCHERBAK

agree with Galeotti’s position, preferring to refer to the worldview of the

Russian President.
Only a small number of researchers share the position held by Galeotti
and Gessen. The second approach that attempts to reconstruct and analyze with
precision the ideological doctrine of the Russian president is generally found
more frequently. One of the first and most interesting attempts at such a
reconstruction can be found in Aleksey Chadayev’s book Putin. His Ideology.7
Chadayev focuses on the birth of Putin’s ideological doctrine, which came
about much later after Putin became president.8
The question of Putin’s ideology is related to the issue of Putinism, which
is seen as the Russian political system under Vladimir Putin. At the end of the
first term of presidency of Vladimir Putin, Vyacheslav Nikonov first used the
term “Putinism” to indicate the unity of the Russian regime and the ideology of
Vladimir Putin.9 Five years later, Anne Applebaum used this term, treating
“Putinism” as a system of managed democracy and corporate capitalism which
reflects Putin’s worldview.10
A striking example of contrasting approaches to Putin’s ideology and
Putinism are present in the writings of Lev Gudkov, on the one hand, and Brian
Taylor, on the other. Gudkov precisely considers the lack of ideology as the
distinguishing feature of “Putinism:”

“There is no doctrine or «political religion» that alone brings «salvation» and «explains
everything,» no all-encompassing, mobilizing ideology that in principle strives to instill in
the masses the idea of building a «new world» and a «new man».”11

Conversely, Taylor’s claim is that we should instead refer to a special

code of “Putinism,” consisting of a complex of “beliefs, emotions, and habits,”
shared by Putin and members of his team.12 In this sense, the code

“is both more and less than an ideology; more, because it involves not just ideas but also
other stimuli for action, and less, because it is not a coherent and encompassing system of
thought.”13

7 Aleksey Chadaev, Putin. Ego ideologiya [Putin. His Ideology] (Moskva: Evropa, 2006), 17.
8 Ibid.
9 Vyacheslav Nikonov, “Putinism,” in Sovremennaya rossiyskaya politika: Kurs lektsiy
[Contemporary Russian Politics: A Course of Lectures], ed. Vyacheslav Nikonov
(Moskva: OLMA, 2003), 29-43.
10 Anne Applebaum, “Putinism: Democracy, the Russian Way,” Berliner Journal 16 (2008):
43-47. Applebaum does not refer to Nikonov and presumably formulated this term on her
own.
11 Lev Gudkov, “The Nature of ‘Putinism’,” Russian Politics and Law 49, no. 2 (2011): 11-12.
12 Brian D. Taylor, The Code of Putinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 10-11.
13 Ibid.

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The People, Values, and the State: How Vladimir Putin’s Views on Ideology Evolved 13

Meanwhile, the task of clearly identifying the origins of the Russian

President’s views is not so easy, especially for those scholars who find it
reasonable to discuss Putin’s ideology. Researchers have not reached agreement
concerning the premises of his ideological doctrine. On the one hand, attempts
have been made to show that Putin’s doctrine continues the tradition of Russian
conservative political thought, and it is influenced by modern Russian
ideologists of conservatism. Michel Eltchaninoff takes this approach, indicating
that the so-called ideological Conservative turn was made by Putin in
accordance with the ideas of Russian conservative and theological thought from
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, unlike many other
researchers, Eltchaninoff also refers to the influence of German conservatism on
Putin.14 However, the apparent popularity of Karl Schmitt and Ernst Junger in
today’s Russia seems to be the result from the consonance of ideas and
approaches possessed by the German conservatives of the Weimar Republic era
and modern Russian conservatives. As Eltchaninoff admits, there is no specific
evidence that German conservatives have had an influence on the Russian
president through his advisers, however direct or indirect. In a similar manner,
Andrei Kolesnikov views Putin as a successor to the tradition of Russian
conservatism and refers to his ideology as being “leased from the eighteenth,
nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.”15 In his interpretation, Putin’s views are
ideologically eclectic and have the conservative core consistent with the
ideology of the nineteenth century Russian Empire.
According to other researchers, the key role in the formation of Putin’s
doctrine was played by his personal history and the political situation in Russia
during his presidency. For example, Aleksey Chadayev pointed out that Putin’s
doctrine appeared in 2003 and “was born out of the events that happened at that
time,” such as the YUKOS affair and the results of elections to the State Duma
amongst other episodes.16 For Gessen, Putin’s work in the Komitet
Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) was the determining factor for the
development of his worldview. Mark Galeotti, Fiona Hill and Clifford G.
Gaddy also highlight the influence of his KGB career as the key to
understanding Putin. Galeotti emphasizes that, as an employee of the late Soviet
KGB, Putin has never adhered to any clear ideological position.17 Similarly, Hill
and Gaddy consider it impossible to refer to systemic ideological doctrine being
held by Putin. We share the approach of those researchers who find it

14 Michel Eltchaninoff, Inside the Mind of Vladimir Putin (London: Hurst & Co Ltd, 2017),
68-74.
15 Andrey Kolesnikov, Rossiyskaya ideologiya posle Kryma: Predely effektivnosti
mobilizatsii [Russian Ideology after Crimea: The Limits of the Effectiveness of
Mobilization] (Moskva: Moskovskiy tsentr Karnegi, 2015), 12.
16 Chadaev, Putin, 18.
17 Galeotti, We Need to Talk.

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14 DENYS KIRYUKHIN, SVITLANA SHCHERBAK

reasonable to discuss Putin’s ideology or doctrine. However, the very concept

of ideology is to be clarified.

Theoretical Framework

What do we mean when we talk about Putin’s ideology? First, we can

speak of ideology as a map of the political and social world that includes
notions of social justice, sovereignty, liberty and the like.18 Hence, it provides
guidance for political action and decision-making. In this sense, Putin’s
ideology is his worldview, which comprises specific conceptions of the state,
democracy, state ideology, nationhood, and the place of the Russian nation in
the world amongst other ideas. As we will show, some of his beliefs form a
stable core - in particular, the notions of statehood and sovereignty - while
others are pragmatic and change whenever necessary. However, in the context
of a political system, ideology designates a set of ideas that justify the existing
institutional order and substantiate it.19 It is in this sense that we speak of the
state ideology and the role of ideology in Putin’s political system of power,
which is referred to as “Putinism.”
Some researchers pay attention to this aspect of Putinism. For example,
Kate C. Langdon and Vladimir Tismăneanu maintain that “Putinism” is “the
legitimizing ideological construct behind a kleptocratic, corrupting political
culture.”20 Putin and “Putinism” therefore reflect themes, ideas and intentions
deeply rooted in the “Russian milieu.”21 Olga Malinova disagrees with Taylor
and Gudkov, viewing ideology as playing an equally important role in the
formation of “Putinism.” She believes that the “new ideology” of the Russian
president began to form in the late 2000s to combine conservatism, populism,
and imperial nationalism.22
Undoubtfully, it is Putin’s views that largely determine the Russian
political system, which has undergone significant transformations under his
rule. Meanwhile, few researchers note that Putin has also undergone a
transformation in his views, in particular, on the role of ideology within
Russia’s political system. As will be shown below, he started from a complete

18 Michael Freeden, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2003).
19 Iris M. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1990).
20 Kate C. Langdon and Vladimir Tismăneanu, Putin’s Totalitarian Democracy: Ideology,
Myth, and Violence in the Twenty-First Century (Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan,
2020), 4-22.
21 Ibid.
22 Olga Malinova, “‘Spiritual Bonds’ as State Ideology: Opportunities and Limitations,”
Russia in Global Affairs 4, no. 18 (December 2014), accessed May 7, 2018,
http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/Spiritual-Bonds-as-State-Ideology-17223.

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The People, Values, and the State: How Vladimir Putin’s Views on Ideology Evolved 15

rejection of ideology and then ultimately revived the state ideology that was
informally enacted by amendments to the Constitution in 2020. What made
Putin turn to the state ideology? Most of the works devoted to Putin and
Putinism do not allow us to answer this question.
There are many attempts to compare “Putinism” with the political
regimes of other countries. Thus, Alexander Motyl draws parallels between
Putin’s power system and Mussolini’s Italy, identifying “Putinism” in relation
to historical Fascism.23 Meanwhile, Vyacheslav Nikonov joins Marlene Laruelle
in pointing to the similarity of Putin’s Russia to France during de Gaulle’s
presidency, recognizing in this ideology a combination of liberal views on the
economy and the value of national sovereignty and conservatism, both of which
are characteristic of Gaullism.24 Jean-Robert Raviot holds a similar position.
The only difference is that Raviot compares the system of “Putinism” with the
Praetorian ideology, which prioritizes protection of the state from external and
internal enemies.25
However, any such comparisons with other countries and political
regimes provide little opportunity for scientific analysis, being arbitrary and
extremely limited in their heuristic potential because historical circumstances
always differ. It is more correct to consider “Putinism” within the context of
Russian history and the history of Putin’s rule. Putin can by-and-large only be
compared to himself.
Besides, many of the authors mentioned above describe political
processes in Russia as taking place in isolation from the trends and processes
common to the European continent, especially to the post-Communist space.
However, in many cases, modern Russia only provides its own version of the
solution to the problems originating with the process of neoliberal globalization,
and so characteristic of Europe in general. In this sense, Putin’s conservative
turn is by no means a unique phenomenon. If we look at the development of the
political situation in Eastern Europe in the last decade, we see a lot of
similarities between Eastern Europe and Russia. These resemblances are
particularly relevant with respect to the strengthening of nationalism and
conservative ideologies.
In addition, analysis rarely considers the assumption of a consensus of
leader and people as the power base of Putin’s political system. Marlene

23 Alexander J. Motyl, “Putin’s Russia as a Fascist Political System,” Communist and Post-
Communist Studies 49, no. 1 (2016): 25-36.
24 Nikonov, “Putinism;” Marlene Laruelle, “Putinism as Gaullism,” Open Democracy 21
(February 2017), accessed November 1, 2019, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/
odr/putinism-as-gaullism/.
25 Jean-Robert Raviot, “Putinism: A Praetorian System?,” Notes de l`Ifri. Russie.Nei.Visions,
no. 106 (March 2018), accessed November 7, 2019, https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/
files/atoms/files/rnv_106_raviot_putinism_praetorian_system_2018.pdf.

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16 DENYS KIRYUKHIN, SVITLANA SHCHERBAK

Laruelle distinguishes three main approaches to describing the nature of the

Putin regime, which consider it to be above all: (1) a kleptocracy; (2) a
totalitarian, neo-Stalinist institution; (3) a conglomerate of different vested
interest groups. This article is close to the third approach, according to which

“the regime’s relationship with Russian society is much more than simply patronal and
authoritarian: it is based on an implicit social contract with the population that is
continuously renegotiated.”26

The acclamation of this contract is carried out through the mechanism of

democratic elections. Kirill Rogov coined the term of “Putin’s supermajority” to
indicate Putin’s electoral base, meaning those who are ready to support him
regardless of the current state of affairs. This “supermajority” “is a political
construct that not so much reflects public opinion as shapes it.”27 In this regard,
the Russian authorities’ close attention to opinion polls is very indicative. Since
mid-1990, those in power started actively working with FOM (Public Opinion
Foundation), initially during the elections. “In 2003, a large-scale project,
Georating FOM, was launched. It was a quarterly study held in 69 federal
subjects (93% of the population) with a sampled population of 34,500 people.”28
Nonetheless, as Rogov explains, “Putin’s supermajority” is not formed
exclusively by crowding out alternative political programs and positions from
the political space. The ideological component of the political system is no less
important because they form the shared social ideal and contribute towards the
identification of a leader and a nation.
While seeking to be the leader of the Russian people, Putin has been
extremely distrustful of Russian citizens who question this consensus, limiting
their political activity by repressing the most active critics of the regime and
imposing censorship on the media. Yet he cannot ignore civic protests and
activism; in other words, he cannot ignore the Maidan, even if it is Ukrainian or
Georgian Maidan. In Turkish, “Meydan” means “marketplace,” a public space
for people gathering. With the passing of time, Putin concluded that civil unity
is to be constructed and maintained through the infiltration of a certain system
of values, the existence of which he had previously considered as a matter of
course.

26 Marlene Laruelle, “Ideological Complementarity or Competition? The Kremlin, the

Church, and the Monarchist Idea in Today’s Russia,” Slavic Review 79, no. 2 (Summer
2020): 346-347.
27 Kirill Rogov, “Triumphs and Crises of Plebiscitary Presidentialism,” in Putin’s Russia:
How It Rose, How It Is Maintained, and How It Might End, ed. Leon Aron (Washington:
AEI, 2015), 103.
28 Nikolay Petrov, “The Evolution of Populism in Russian Politics,” in Populism as a
Common Challenge, eds. Claudia Crawford, Boris Makarenko and Nikolay Petrov
(Moscow: Political Encyclopedia, 2018): 89-101.

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The People, Values, and the State: How Vladimir Putin’s Views on Ideology Evolved 17

The changes to the Constitution that took place in 2020 were an

important milestone in the transformation of the Russian political system. An
essential element of these changes was the entrenchment in the constitution of
certain ideological provisions that express the conservative narrative Putin
supports, such as the indication that the family is only the union of a man and a
woman, or that the state protects historical truth. Having implemented the
constitutional reform, Putin acted as both the architect of the new system of
power and its main ideologist.

The Dynamic of Putin’s Popularity

Vladimir Putin’s domestic political success is only partially based on the
established mechanism of vertical power. Kirill Rogov pointed out two crucial
components of Putin’s popularity: economic growth and patriotic mobilization
associated with Russia’s actions in the foreign policy arena.29 Putin’s popularity
was based on at least one of these components over the different periods of his rule.
However, the economic growth stalled after the annexation of Crimea and
intervention in the Donbas conflict, as Western sanctions wore down the Russian
economy. Starting in 2014, patriotic mobilization and promotion of conservative
ideology, which provides the ideational framework for patriotic mobilization,
turned out to be the main instruments for supporting the public consensus and
forming of Putin’s supermajority. At the same time, the role of authoritarian
control over the production of public opinion has significantly increased.
Putin’s ratings have actually fallen four times during his time in power.
The first time was in 2000 during the “war with oligarchs,” while on a second
occasion in early 2005, the fall in popularity coincided with all-Russian protests
against the monetization of privilege. In 2011, the President’s ratings plunged
for the third time, with a wave of protests against parliamentary election fraud
and Putin’s intention to retake the presidency, and a fourth decline occurred in
2018 following the adoption of pension reforms. Putin’s approval ratings
dropped to 60-65% during these periods before recovering for several reasons.
After their decline in 2018, the ratings increased moderately in 2019 but have
since fallen to a fourteen-year low over spring 2020.30
The peaks of Putin’s popularity, when more than 80% of Russians
approved his governance, were in 2008 (the Russo-Georgian war) and 2014 (the
annexation of Crimea) where clearly these peaks were associated with the

29 Kirill Rogov, “Triumphs.”

30 “Russians’ Trust in Putin Hits 14-Year Low – State Poll,” The Moscow Times (online),
April 28, 2020, accessed May 7, 2020, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/04/28/
russians-trust-in-putin-hits-14-year-low-state-poll-a70128.

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18 DENYS KIRYUKHIN, SVITLANA SHCHERBAK

patriotic mobilization of Russian society. After 2008, the gradual decline in

Putin’s popularity began mainly due to the global economic crisis that had
severe repercussions on Russia. This fall culminated in a wave of protests in
2011 - 2013, when experts talked about the end of “Putin’s consensus,” bearing
in mind the cessation of public loyalty to the authorities in exchange for
guarantees of stability and prosperity.31
Public opinion changed after the annexation of the Crimea, when the
growing discontent ceased, and Russian society again consolidated its support
for the authorities. The essence of this “Crimean consensus” was, as Lilia
Shevtsova put it, “an exchange of social welfare and future for the hope of
living in the Great Power.”32 However, it is difficult to agree with this definition
as the question had never been raised or posed by the authorities in this way.
The “Crimean consensus” transposed the situation into identity dimension
where the problem of social well-being generally loses its meaning. That is
precisely the reason why the level of consolidation of the people around the
leader was so high in this period. The authorities’ approval ratings skyrocketed,
Putin was trusted by 86% of the population (the highest level ever achieved),
and even the ruling party’s rating skyrocketed from 25% in 2013 to 50% in
2014. It is for the same reason that the “Crimean consensus” has lasted so long,
even though experts primarily assumed that the mobilization effect would be
short term of the annexation of Crimea.
Once the mobilization began to weaken, economic issues have returned
progressively to the top of Russia’s political agenda. In 2018 - 2019, the
government was still generally supported by the population, but its trust ratings
had returned to the levels of the indicators of “protest” in 2012 - 2013. Thus,
trust in President Putin had dipped from 59% in November of 2017 to 32% at
the beginning of 2019;33 trust in the government had decreased even more than
in the 2013-2012 period. In this regard, many experts said that the “Crimean
consensus” is over because of economic stagnation, falling real incomes over

31 Mykola Siruk, Igor Samokish and Lilia Shevtzova, “Fakticheski my prisutstvuem lish’ v
nachale pervogo akta budushchei rossiiskoi dramy,” [In fact, we are present only at the
beginning of the future Russian drama’ first act] Den’, December 29, 2011, accessed June
17, 2019, https://day.kyiv.ua/ru/article/panorama-dnya/liliya-shevcova-fakticheski-my-
prisutstvuem-lish-v-nachale-pervogo-akta.
32 Lilia Shevtsova,”Obmen blagopoluchiya na nadezhdu zhyt’ v Velikoi Derzhave,” [The
Exchange of Prosperity for the Hope of Living in a Great State] Ezhednevnyi Zhurnal,
April 17, 2014, accessed January 27, 2019, http://ej.ru/?a=note&id=24962.
33 “Vliyanie ukhodit iz Kremlya,” [The Influence withdraws from the Kremlin] RBC
(online), March 4, 2019, accessed November 7, 2019, https://www.rbc.ru/newspaper/
2019/03/04/5c79195c9a794716ebbc4257.

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the past five years and the adoption of pension reform that served as a trigger
for a surge of accumulated discontent.34
The fluctuations outlined here clearly demonstrate that if the main engine
of Putin’s popularity in 2000 - 2008 was “sustainable economic growth – due to
raising living standards and building confidence in the future,”35 when the
economic crisis hit Russia, the ratings rushed down and only rocketed up again
on a wave of patriotic mobilization.
If we compare the chronology of the emergence of various ideological
concepts with the dynamics of Russians’ negative assessments of the situation
in the state, it becomes clear that the ideologization process was a reaction to
the weakening of popular support for the authorities and the threat of protests
across Russia. Its goal was to maintain the consolidation of the “supermajority”
in a situation when the old foundations of unity eroded.36

Values versus Ideology

In the first years of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, Russian society was
shaken by numerous discussions on ideological issues, while the Russian
authorities maintained quite a sustainable anti-ideological strategy. As Boris
Yeltsin himself used to say in those days:

“In Russian history during the twentieth century, there have been various periods -
monarchism, totalitarianism, perestroika and finally a democratic path of development.
Each stage has its own ideology … [but now] … we have none.”37

Thus, however unconsciously, the Russian authority of that period,

following Francis Fukuyama’s ideas, supposed that it was merely necessary to
eliminate the remnants of communist dogmatism to ensure the assertion of the
“victorious” liberal values.

34 “Real’nye dokhody rossiyan upali pyatyi god podryad,” [Real Incomes of Russians Fell
for the Fifth Year in a Row] RBC (online), January 25, 2019, accessed November 7, 2019,
https://www.rbc.ru/economics/25/01/2019/5c4af2c39a7947badf2d4e74.
35 Denis Volkov, “Kak ros i padal reiting Putina,” [How Putin’s Rating Rose and Fell] Echo
Moskvy, October 3, 2013, accessed November 7, 2019, https://echo.msk.ru/blog/
denisvolkov/1169716-echo/.
36 Kirill Rogov coined the term of “Putin’s supermajority” to indicate Putin’s electoral base,
meaning those who are ready to support him regardless of the current state of affairs. This
“supermajority” “is a political construct that not so much reflects public opinion as shapes
it” (Rogov, “Triumphs,” 103). This article was prepared before Russia launched a large-
scale invasion of Ukraine. The authors believe that the way the situation in Russia started
to develop after February 24 confirm a hypothesis put forward in this paper.
37 Fiona Hill and Clifford C. Gaddy, Mr. Putin. Operative in the Kremlin (Washington DC:
Brookings Institution Press, 2013), 43.

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20 DENYS KIRYUKHIN, SVITLANA SHCHERBAK

The same strategy had been long maintained by Putin, who even
demonstrated his negative attitude to ideology vocally. An example of this can
be seen in Putin’s interview on December 24, 2000, where he placed ideology
in opposition to the pragmatics of national interests. The Russian president then
declared the need to “absolutely de-ideologize” Russia’s foreign policy, that is
to withdraw from the aspects of cooperation with various states that were
unprofitable for Russia (for example, cooperation with Cuba), which had been
based on ideological, rather than economic, interests.38 In many ways, the
Russian president did not change this attitude until 2014. The integration
projects of the post-Soviet space initiated by Russia, such as the Customs Union
or the Eurasian Economic Union, are primarily economic unions, having
practically no ideological substantiation.
For Vladimir Putin, especially if we consider the period of the 1990s and
early 2000s, the point is not the opposition of different ideologies, but the
opposition between ideology and values. However, for the Russian President - and
this is a key point of his worldview – values matter only in terms of state power:
justice, the system of law and democracy are significant only insofar as they
contribute to the preservation and development of the Russian state. As Putin points
out in the same Address,

“It is our values [we emphasize once more that in this document he does not distinguish
between European and Russian values] that determine our desire to see Russia’s state
independence grow, and its sovereignty strengthen.”39

Putin is an etatist (gosudarstvennik). He describes the breakup of the Soviet

Union as “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century.”40 However,
it would be a mistake to perceive this utterance as nostalgia for the Soviet Union
as it is rather nostalgia for lost political subjectiveness, sovereignty, and
statehood. If we speak nominally of Putin’s personal ideology, then it would be
precisely a very statist ideology, in the 1990s to the early 2000s oriented towards
the restoration of the state institutions that suffered during Yeltsin’s liberal
reforms. Both Putin’s programmatic article Russia at the Turn of the Millennium
and his first President’s Address to the Federal Assembly in 2000 manifest an
unambiguous orientation towards stability as opposed to revolution, towards the

38 Intervyu Prezidenta Rossiyskoy Federatsii V.V. Putina telekanalam ORT, RTR i

Nezavisimoy gazete, 24 dekabrya 2000, [Interview of the President of the Russian
Federation V.V. Putin to ORT, RTR TV channels and “Nezavisimaya Gazeta”, December
24, 2000], President of Russia, accessed November 22, 2019, http://kremlin.ru/events/
president/transcripts/21149.
39 Chadaev, Putin, 192.
40 Ibid., 188.

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The People, Values, and the State: How Vladimir Putin’s Views on Ideology Evolved 21

strengthening of state institutions and the assertion of national sovereignty.41 At

the same time, Putin clearly declared, “I am against restoration of an official state
ideology in any form in Russia,”42 contrasting the value-based social consensus
with the ideological dogmatism imposed top-down.
For Putin, while “the strong state” is a guarantee of stability and
prosperity, another basic condition for successful development is political
consent, which is treated as a product of “the people” being united around
shared values:

“Fruitful and creative work which our country needs so badly today is impossible in a
split and internally disintegrated society, a society where the main social sections and
political forces have different basic values and fundamental ideological orientations.”43

However, back then Putin believed that there is no need to impose these
values on society. Up to his third presidential term, Putin had not considered
European and Russian values to be in opposition in any way, but rather believes
these values to have been formed by Russia and Europe together. This idea was
clearly set forth in his Address to the Federal Assembly in 2005, in which he
most notably declared:

“Russia was, is and will, of course, be a major European power. Achieved through much
suffering by European culture, the ideals of freedom, human rights, justice, and
democracy have for many centuries been our society’s determining values.”44

This generated Putin’s high-profile initiative for the creation of a unified

Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok, because the “basic values” (according to
Putin) are the same for everyone.
Aside from some references to the ideas of conservatism and
traditionalism like “indigenously Russian” values, there is no ideological
distinctness in Putin’s texts and speeches of the early period. However, the
invariable ideological core of Putin’s views can already be seen clearly in this
early period, then forming the basis for further variations. This ideological core
is centered on ideas of a sovereign strong state and “the people” united in shared

41 Vladimir Putin, “Rossiya na rubezhe tyisyacheletiy,” [Russia at the Turn of the

Millennium], Nezavisimaya gazeta, December 30, 1999, accessed November 23, 2019,
http://www.ng.ru/politics/1999-12-30/4_millenium.html.
42 Vladimir Putin, “Rossiya na rubezhe tyisyacheletiy,” [Russia at the Turn of the
Millennium], Nezavisimaya gazeta, December 30, 1999, accessed November 23, 2019,
http://www.ng.ru/politics/1999-12-30/4_millenium.html.
43 Ibid.
44 Annual Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, April 25, 2005,
President of Russia, accessed May 22, 2019, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/
transcripts/22931.

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22 DENYS KIRYUKHIN, SVITLANA SHCHERBAK

values, which Putin takes to be the key to the successful development of post-
Communist Russia.
The first ideological doctrine approved consistently by the Russian
president, arose as a reaction to the “color revolutions” (Maidans) taking place
in the post-Soviet space. The Kremlin believed that these protests were
controlled externally and that they threatened the social unity and sovereignty of
states. Putin saw evidence in them of a loss of government control over the
power-forming mechanism.

The Conservative Turn

Over the years he has been in power, Putin has not radically revised his
understanding of the Russian state and the goals of its development.
Nevertheless, from the second term of Putin’s presidency (2004 – 2008), the
ideological certainty of the regime has become more and more distinct under the
influence of foreign and domestic political factors, although the Russian
President has consistently opposed the revision of an article of the Constitution
prohibiting the establishment of any ideology as mandatory.45 Putin himself
prefers to talk not about ideology, but about worldview, as he does in the article
Russia: The National Question.46 He remembers the negative consequences of
the Soviet ideological policy and therefore does not hide the fact that he intends
to rely on the experience of Western countries, where there is no official
ideology, but at the same time, the state helps to maintain a certain value
system. The Russian president claims:

“Remember how, with the help of Hollywood, the US shaped the consciousness of several
generations – and did so while introducing not the worst-possible values, in terms of
national interests and public morality. There is something to learn here.”47

In other words, he is talking about the implementation of a broader task

than that which is solved by the party or the official state ideology.
The attention of the Russian power to ideological issues has become a
reaction to the growth of social and political problems in Russia. The

45 Attempts to revise this constitutional article have been made. In particular, one such
initiative came from representatives of the United Russia party in 2013, but it was rejected
by Putin (“Kremlin Against Ending Ban on Official State Ideology,” Johnson’s Russia
List, December 5, 2013, accessed December 11, 2019, http://russialist.org/kremlin-
against-ending-ban-on-official-state-ideology/).
46 Vladimir Putin, “Rossiya: natsionalnyiy vopros,” [Russia: The National Question]
Nezavisimaya gazeta, January 21, 2012, accessed December 15, 2019, http://www.ng.ru/
politics/2012-01-23/1_national.html.
47 Ibid.

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The People, Values, and the State: How Vladimir Putin’s Views on Ideology Evolved 23

ideologization (without the promotion of an official state ideology) was a

reaction to the weakening of popular support for the authorities and the threat of
protests across Russia. Its goal was to maintain the consolidation of the
“supermajority” in a situation when the old foundations of unity eroded.48 This
becomes clear if we compare the chronology of the emergence of various
ideological concepts with the dynamics of Russians’ negative assessments of
the situation in the state.
The first ideological concept – that of sovereign democracy – was formed
in the period 2004 – 2006. In 2005, an ideological state holiday was established,
the National Unity Day. At the same time, the space for democracy in Russia
was “narrowed extremely” because the direct election of governors was
canceled and the requirements for political parties to participate in political life
were tightened.49 Sovereign democracy has been spoken and written about by
both European and American experts; meanwhile, it seems to perplex some
authors in the extreme, such as Hill and Gaddy, who believe that this doctrine
reflects the logic of the Russian autocracy.50 Yet this doctrine is quite simple – it
is a protective doctrine. It aims at defending sovereign governmental control
over the functioning and transfer of power. One of the key developers of this
doctrine, assistant of the Russian President Vladislav Surkov, expressly states
that sovereign democracy is

“a mode of political life of the society, where the authorities, their bodies and actions are
chosen, formed and directed exclusively by the Russian nation.”51

Having accepted the sovereign democracy doctrine, Putin for the first
time made a clear distinction between Russia and the West. However, this
distinction is not yet radical; Surkov’s formula is “Not to fall out of Europe and
to adhere to the West is an essential element of the institutionalization of
Russia.”52 Indeed, the sovereign democracy doctrine represents an attempt to
combine the conservative ideological trend with Western concept of democracy.
On the one hand, Surkov has emphasized that Russian democracy was not

48 Kirill Rogov coined the term of “Putin’s supermajority” to indicate Putin’s electoral base,
meaning those who are ready to support him regardless of the current state of affairs. This
supermajority “is a political construct that not so much reflects public opinion as shapes
it” (Rogov, “Triumphs,” 103).
49 “Demokratiya v Rossii: tendentsii i ugrozy. Periodicheskii obzor,” [Democracy in Russia:
Trends and Threats. Periodic review] SOVA Center for Information and Analysis,
January-February 2005, accessed December 15, 2019, https://www.sova-center.ru/
democracy/publications/2005/04/d4146/.
50 Hill and Gaddy, Mr. Putin.
51 Vladislav Surkov, Natsionalizatsiya budushchego. Suverennaya demokratiya. Ot idei - k
doktrine [The Nationalization of the Future. Sovereign Democracy: from Idea to
Doctrine], (Moskva: Isdatel’stvo “Evropa”, 2006), 28.
52 Ibid., 43.

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24 DENYS KIRYUKHIN, SVITLANA SHCHERBAK

something forced on Russia due to its defeat in the cold war (there was no such
defeat), but the result of “the very European nature of its [Russian] culture.”53
On the other hand, the sovereign democracy is oriented at searching for the
proper and unique way that would be based upon the peculiarities of the
historical and cultural development of Russia.
In fact, this doctrine outlines the rejection of political liberalism in favor
of “cultural tradition” and “authentic values” within a retained model of
electoral democracy. A sovereign democracy is based on an organic
interpretation of “the people” being united by common values and goals. With
this in mind, there is being strengthened a pattern of a strong state as a guarantor
of the political and socio-economic development - a state is separated from
business and is dominating it, for only this way the state is capable of protecting
the national interests, and not those of big business. The strong independent
state is thus the external embodiment of sovereignty, while “the people”
constitutes its “democratic” internal foundation.
The West (the European Union and the United States of America) refused
to acknowledge the model of Russian power formed by Putin as a particular
form of democracy. Without such acknowledgment, the doctrine is unable to
perform its main function related to the protection of Russian sovereignty. It
thereby becomes meaningless.
Yet the revolution in Ukraine was merely the final act of the development
that began with the position of the West in the cases of Pussy Riot and Sergei
Magnitsky. The scale of the problem now being addressed by the Russian
president has changed. He forms the ideology of eclectic conservatism aimed
not only at protecting Russian statehood but also at Russia’s gaining a powerful
position in the system of international relations. It appears that Putin has now
concluded that protecting the sovereignty of Russia requires not merely the
building of an effective defense against external influence but reformatting the
system of international relations in order to neutralize the very possibility of
such influence.
Putin is increasingly appealing to the tradition of Russian statehood and a
sense of patriotism, pointing to Western threats to the sovereignty of Russia.
After the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Putin is no longer seeking a
special place for Russia in the world order formed in the 1990s, but instead
relies on the formation of a new multipolar world order, focused on national
traditions and interests, regional alliances, and coalitions. In this policy, he is
consonant and even acts in relation to them as “comrade-in-chief” with the

53 Ibid., 30.

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The People, Values, and the State: How Vladimir Putin’s Views on Ideology Evolved 25

European right-wing populists, who also act from isolationist positions against
liberalism and globalism, by appealing to national patriotism.54
In 2009, the pro-Putin party United Russia, for the first time, clearly
stated that its ideology is “Russian conservatism.”55 It was after the Maidans in
Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan and on the eve of the protests in Bolotnaya
square. At that time, the number of citizens who believed that things in the
country were developing on the wrong track increased again. A few years
before, at the meeting of United Russia, Surkov declared, “We are certainly the
conservatives, but we don’t know yet what this is.”56 However, Russian
conservatism did not add to the substantiveness to the ideological position of
the pro-Putin party. At its core, Russian conservatism is a new interpretation of
the same protective idea that is expressed by the “sovereign democracy.”
However, the goal of the political positioning of the ruling party United Russia
was not the development of an ideological discourse, but the structuring of the
political field of the state. The conservative United Russia became its center and
foundation, whereas the left wing of the political spectrum was represented by
the Communist Party and a “Just Russia” (social democrats), and the right wing
by the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (nationalists). All other political
forces (the liberals and the radical right and left) were, with rare exceptions,
outside the political field. Political discourse itself as antagonism between
positions, opinions, and interests were leveled.57 From that moment on, if we
can talk about politics in Russia, it is only in the context of relations between
the authorities (the elements of which were the United Russia, the Communist
party, the LDPR, and “Just Russia”) and the non-systemic opposition.
The next important point in the evolution of Putin’s politics of ideology
was the annexation of Crimea. Although the so-called “Crimean Consensus”
demonstrated an extremely high level of public support for the authorities and
the cohesion of Russian society, Crimea was in fact also a crisis faced by the
Kremlin. Annexing Crimea is a task that goes beyond the state power’s
everyday pragmatism; it is an undertaking that requires its solution through an
appeal to ideology, which allows all Russians to feel their involvement in what
is happening. Therefore, Putin appeals to the concept of the Historical Russia
that has been widely used in the Russian conservative discourse.

54 Jan-Werner Müller, What is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,

2016).
55 Boris Gryzlov, “Sokhranit’ i priumnozhit’: konservatizm i modernizatsiya,” [Preserve and
Multiply: Conservatism and Modernization] Izvestiya, December 1, 2009, accessed May
22, 2019, https://iz.ru/news/355987.
56 Michail Remizov, “Konservatizm,” [Conservatism] in Myslyashchaya Rossiya:
Kartografiya sovremennykh intellektualnykh napravleniy [Thinking Russia: The
Cartography of Modern Intellectual Trends], ed. Vitaliy Kyrennoy (Moskva: Fond
“Nasledie Evrazii,” 2006), 117.
57 Mouffe, On the Political.

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26 DENYS KIRYUKHIN, SVITLANA SHCHERBAK

For the first time, the logic of the concept of the Historical Russia (without
using this term) is found in the article Russia at the Turn of the Millennium, which
the Russian President published in 1999. Putin wrote directly about the Historical
Russia in the article Russia: The National Question (and then again mentioned it
in a speech on Victory Day 2019), which was published at a time when there
were political protests in the country and the government was looking for
ideological grounds for the unity of the Pro-presidential majority to marginalize
these protests. The Historical Russia is a community that is “built back in the
eighteenth century”58 based on Russian culture and traditional values.59 In other
words, this is another designation of the Russian people, which, in the
interpretation of Putin, represents “a poly-ethnic civilization, held together by a
Russian cultural core.”60
But overall, despite the obvious tendency towards a right-wing ideological
discourse, the position of the Russian President is still rather slurred. He tries to
combine civic patriotism, the recognition of Russia as a multinational state, with
the traditional nationalist view of Russians as a state-forming nation. His
eclecticism and inconsistency were fully manifested in the resonant statement that
he made at a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club on October 18,
2018. Putin then (just after Trump’s declaration that he is a nationalist) said the
following:

“The Russian Federation initially shaped itself, from its very first steps, as a multi-ethnic
state… If we want Russia to remain as it is, to develop and gain strength, while Russians
remain a state-forming nation, then the preservation of this country serves the interests of
the Russian people. But if we huff out this caveman nationalism and throw mud at people
of other ethnic groups, we will destroy this country – something the Russian people are
less than interested in. I want Russia to survive, including in the interests of the Russian
people. In this context I have said that I am the most proper and true nationalist and a
most effective one too. But this is not caveman nationalism, stupid and idiotic and leading
to the collapse of our country.”61

As we can see, the Russian President is simultaneously trying to flirt with

the Russian right (conservatives and nationalists), whose influence in the
country after the “Conservative turn” had significantly increased, while
58 Putin, “Rossiya.”
59 In a 2019 speech on Victory Day, Putin already spoke of “the thousand-year-old historic
Russia” (Victory Parade on Red Square, May 9, 2019, President of Russia, accessed
November 1, 2019, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60490). The “Historical
Russia” is an imaginary community, and its boundaries are precisely the boundaries of
communities that, as you know, may not coincide with the borders of the state (in the
same eighteenth century that Putin refers to, the state borders of Russia Empire repeatedly
changed).
60 Putin, “Rossiya.”
61 Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, October 18, 2018, President of
Russia, accessed September 21, 2019, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/58848.

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The People, Values, and the State: How Vladimir Putin’s Views on Ideology Evolved 27

avoiding the negative consequences that will follow if the state power starts to
implement a nationalistic policy.
Nevertheless, the Historical Russia is a nationalistic concept that puts the
issues of territorial belonging not in the legal dimension, but in the dimension of
identity (the boundaries of the Historical Russia are not political, but cultural,
ethical, and even, as Putin himself points out, civilizational). Accordingly, the
question of Crimea’s belonging is meaningless within this logic because, in the
self-perception of the Russian people, the peninsula enters the space of
Historical Russia, to wit, it is already “ours” and this status cannot be the
subject of doubt, debate, or discussion. “Crimea has always been an inseparable
part of Russia. This firm conviction is based on truth and justice and was passed
from generation to generation,” – said the president of Russia in the Crimean
Speech.62 Crimea acted as a manifestation of the Historical Russia.
It is noteworthy that according to data provided by FOM for March 2019,
77% of Russians approved the annexation of Crimea but only 39% of the
population considered it to be economically justified. “Crimea is ours” has
drawn symbolic borders in Russian society, clearly delineating the core of the
nation and becoming an important tool for construction of national unity.
Although the level of support enjoyed by the authorities has plummeted since
the adoption of pension reform in 2018, the level of approval for Crimea’s
annexation remains practically unchanged.63 This means that “Crimea is ours”
has become a significant part of Russian identity, so the end of consolidation
around the authorities does not mean that Crimea will be rejected.
Thus, after the annexation of Crimea, “Putinism” took its final shape as
both a system and an ideology. The end of the “Crimean consensus” is
associated with the return of the 2011-2013 agenda. By the beginning of the
fourth term of Putin’s presidency, dissatisfaction with the situation in the
country began to increase in Russian society. At that time, the Kremlin again
became more in need of ideology. That is why significant changes were taking
place in the informal decision-making structure created by Putin to manage the
vertical of executive power. Russian political scientist Evgeny Minchenko
called this structure “the Politburo 2.0."64 Minchenko prepares reports with
analyses of the structure and composition of Putin’s Politburo annually since
2012. Russian political scientist classified the candidates for membership to the
Politburo 2.0, namely the persons associated with members of the Politburo, in

62 Address by President of the Russian Federation, March 18, 2014, President of Russia,
accessed October 7, 2019, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/20603.
63 Obshchestvennoe mnenie – 2018 [Public Opinion - 2018] (Moskva: Analiticheskii Tzentr
Yuriya Levady, 2019), Yuri Leveda Analitycal Center, accessed December 1, 2019,
https://www.levada.ru/cp/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/OM-2018.pdf.
64 It is by analogy with the name of the governing body of the Communist Party. The
Politburo consisted of the most influential party members.

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28 DENYS KIRYUKHIN, SVITLANA SHCHERBAK

blocks, for example, the power block, political block, technical block, and so
on. The peculiarity of the report for 2019 is that for the first time it marked out
the ideological block.65 According to Minchenko, both conservatives Patriarch
Kirill and Metropolitan Tikhon (Shovkunov), and economic liberals Alexei
Kudrin and Sergey Kirienko are the representatives of this bloc.
For researchers such as Cheng Chen, this, at first glance, is a strange
combination of people of different ideological orientations into one team, and in
general “the incoherence of the regime’s ideological repertoire” is evidence of the
Putin regime’s inability “to come up with a clear and viable ideology.”66 Chen
believes this ideological inconsistency is due to the complexity of the reconciliation
of the primary modern Russian antagonisms, such as economic liberalism and
nationalism. However, in our opinion, Cheng Chen proceeds from the false premise
that the Russian regime seeks to develop one clear and consistent ideology for the
state. Steven M. Fish, by the way, makes a similar mistake, when he writes that
Putin’s ideology “cannot deliver a compelling vision of the future;” in other words,
that Putin failed in the construction of the ideology.67 Nevertheless, Putin has never
sought to develop a coherent, consistent ideological system; various ideas, even if
they mutually contradict each other, acquired coherence being instruments for
solution of one common task. Moreover, his approach to ideology is typical of
many European right-wing populist movements fusing nationalism and economic
liberalism with claims to sovereignty.68

Putinism as an Illiberal Alternative

As Vladislav Surkov has expressed it, Putinism itself claims to be an
ideology. In his article Putin’s Lasting State, he calls Putinism the ideology of the
future, because “present-day Putin can hardly be considered a Putinist.”69 Surkov
points out that Russia is accused of interference in elections and referenda in other
countries, while in reality “Russia interferes with their brains, and they don’t

65 Politburo 2.0 i antiisteblishmentnaya volna, [Politburo 2.0 and the Anti-establishment

Wave] Minchenko Consulting, accessed May 15, 2019, http://minchenko.ru/netcat_files/
userfiles/PB_2.0_I_ANTIISTEBLIShMENTNAYa_VOLNA_04.06.19_LAST.pdf.
66 Cheng Chen, The Return of Ideology: The Search for Regime Identities in Postcommunist
Russia and China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016), 93-95.
67 Steven M. Fish, “What Is Putinism?” Journal of Democracy 28, no. 4 (2017): 70.
68 Quinn Slobodian and Dieter Plehwe, “Neoliberals against Europe,” in Mutant
Neoliberalism: Market Rule and Political Rupture, eds. William Callison and Zachary
Manfredi (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020).
69 Vladislav Surkov, “Dolgoe gosudarstvo Putina,” [Putin’s Lasting State] Nezavisimaya
gazeta, February 11, 2019, accessed November 7, 2019, http://www.ng.ru/ideas/2019-02-
11/5_7503_surkov.html.

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The People, Values, and the State: How Vladimir Putin’s Views on Ideology Evolved 29

know what to do with their own transformed consciousness.”70 According to the

ex-assistant to the Russian President, the current Russian power made a bet on
national sovereignty and national values. Thus, the Russian power anticipated the
logic of the world order’s development, which only today, after Brexit, the
European “anti-immigrant wave,” and the American struggle for the return of
greatness (“Make America Great Again”), has begun to be accepted by many
other world players. That is why, Surkov points out, for critics of the global
liberal world order in different parts of the world, Russia becomes understandable
and predictable, and its leader - a role model.
Indeed, looking at the rhetoric of the French National Front, the Fidesz
Party in Hungary, the Liberty Party of Austria, the Justice and Development
Party in Turkey, the Brexit Party in the UK, the United Socialist Party of
Venezuela, or the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, we can safely say that Putin’s anti-
liberalism and conservatism are much closer to all of them and more
understandable than liberal rhetoric.
So, when Putin made his resonant statement that “the liberal idea has
become obsolete,”71 he just had in mind that now is the time of Putinism, which in
different countries and different regions of the world has different expressions,
but at its core is always associated with a conservative course for the approval of
a new post-liberal (which also means post-Western) world order.
For a long time after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was limited
in its ability to influence other countries because it could not offer an alternative
to the West’s universalist ideology. The concepts of the “Russian World,”
“Russian Conservatism,” “Historical Russia,” and even “Sovereign Democracy,”
like any other conservative and nationalist ideas in general, are particularistic and
could not solve this task.72 In this regard, Lawrence Freedman notes,

“Moscow can no longer claim leadership of an international ideological movement… Its

main messages, however, are now crudely nationalist, and so its natural supporters are on
the xenophobic right – figures such as Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orbán…
This is not the same as leading a movement with a clear ideological identity.”73

However, he is only partly right. One can agree with him that the
nationalist rhetoric is relevant only for the local national community, but he
makes a mistake by ignoring the fact that such figures as Nigel Farage, Marine
Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping

70 Ibid.
71 Interview with The Financial Times, June 27, 2019, President of Russia, accessed
November 11, 2019, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60836.
72 Mikhail Suslov, “‘Russian World’ Concept: Post-Soviet Geopolitical Ideology and the
Logic of ‘Spheres of Influence’,” Geopolitics 23, no. 2 (2018): 330-353.
73 Lawrence Freedman, “Putin’s New Cold War,” New Statesman, March 14, 2018, accessed
December 15, 2019, https://www.newstatesman.com/2018/03/putin-s-new-cold-war.

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30 DENYS KIRYUKHIN, SVITLANA SHCHERBAK

share a common orientation towards revising the existing world order and the
fact that they tend to resort to populist practices of contrasting “us” and “them”
for international polarization and asserting the “hegemonic unity of the people”
in their countries.74 From this position, Putinism can really be an attractive
alternative for those who are focused on revising the liberal world order that
developed in the 1990s.

Conclusion
We can be very critical of Surkov’s statement that Putin’s state
distinguishes between the ability to hear and the ability to understand “the deep
nation.”75 At the same time, we need to recognize that this statement is very
consonant with the worldview of the Russian president. Putin has always
presented himself as a spokesman for the interest of the people in their
confrontation with elites and the state bureaucracy, but above all with the
“hostile West” and globalization under the “Western rules,” which he treats as a
menace to the sovereignty of the people. The notion of a sovereign strong State
as the external dimension of national unity permeates all variations of Putin’s
ideological narrative.76 “The people” (unified nation) and “the state” are two
correlate poles in Putinism, and their binding center is sovereignty. These are
three nodal points of Putin’s political discourse.
Over his years in power, Putin has changed his attitude to the state
ideology. From complete indifference to the ideological issues, he proceeded
toward the creation and reproduction of an ideological narrative under the
influence of public protests that swept through post-Soviet countries. The
constitutional amendments proposed by Putin in 2020 did not change the
thirteenth article of the Constitution, which prohibits any state ideology.
Nonetheless, for the first time in the history of post-Soviet Russia they
consolidated conservative values as state ideology.
Putin has spoken publicly about sovereignty upon many occasions and
within different contexts. He saw his service to the country in the restoration of
sovereignty lost in 1991. At a meeting with Members of the Valdai International
Discussion Club in 2007, Putin put it this way:

74 Nadya Urbinati, Democracy Disfigured. Opinion, Truth, and the People (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2014), 131.
75 Vladislav Surkov, “Dolgoe gosudarstvo.”
76 “Each citizen should feel that he is a part of the nation, involved in its fate,” Putin said in
his “Annual Address to the Federal Assembly” (Annual Address to the Federal Assembly,
April 26, 2007, President of Russia, accessed January 11, 2019, http://en.kremlin.ru/
events/president/transcripts/24203).

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The People, Values, and the State: How Vladimir Putin’s Views on Ideology Evolved 31

“Sovereignty is therefore something very precious today, something exclusive, you could
even say. Russia cannot exist without defending its sovereignty. Russia will either be
independent and sovereign or will most likely not exist at all.”77

There, he primarily meant state sovereignty, understanding it as

independence from external influence in a wide variety of foreign and domestic
policy domains from defense to technology. Putin even said about the desire of
the Russian people for “sovereignty in spiritual, ideological and foreign policy
spheres” as an integral part of their “national character.” Constitutional
amendments initiated by Putin in 2020, which bring Russia out of the
jurisdiction of international law, have the same goal to ensure Russia’s
sovereignty in the field of law.
At the same time, state sovereignty is based on popular sovereignty, by
which Putin means the will of the plebiscite majority. A strong independent
state is an external manifestation of sovereignty while “the people” as a unity
constitutes its “democratic” domestic framework. In his paper Democracy and
Quality of the Government, Putin writes that his and Dmitry Medvedev’s
leadership have managed “to reanimate the state, [and] restore popular
sovereignty which is the basis of true democracy.”78 He also refers to the will of
the people as becoming immediately the will of the plebiscitary majority:

“The policies we pursued in the 2000s consistently reflected the will of the people.
Elections confirmed this time and again. In fact, this was also confirmed by opinion polls
between elections.”79

As Russia’s integrity is an absolute priority for Putin, he combines right-

wing conservative discourse with the rejection of ethnic nationalism.80 Such
eclecticism and the internal inconsistency of the Russian official ideological
narrative acquires its own internal logic and coherence if we look at it from the

77 Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, September 19, 2013, President of
Russia, accessed November 9, 2019, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/19243.
78 Vladimir Putin, “Demokratiya i kachestvo gosudarstva,” [Democracy and the Quality of
Government] Kommersant, February 6, 2012, accessed December 5, 2019,
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1866753.
79 Putin’s texts often refer to a plebiscite majority embodying the “will of the people.” For
instance, Putin writes in his “Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly” (Presidential
Address to the Federal Assembly, December 12, 2013, President of Russia, accessed May
11, 2019, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/19825): “This destruction of
traditional values from above not only leads to negative consequences for society, but is
also essentially anti-democratic, since it is carried out on the basis of abstract, speculative
ideas, contrary to the will of the majority, which does not accept the changes occurring or
the proposed revision of values.”
80 This trend has continued thus far, despite the fact that the concept of “the state-forming
people” has emerged thanks to the amendments to the Russian Constitution adopted in 2020.

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32 DENYS KIRYUKHIN, SVITLANA SHCHERBAK

point of view of the two functions that are performed today by the state
ideology in Russia.
First, Putin’s eclectic etatism is aimed at protecting Russia’s sovereignty,
which involves not just building effective protection against external influence,
which was the aim of the Sovereign Democracy’s doctrine, but also
reformatting the system of international relations so that the possibility of this
influence can be neutralized. Hence Putin’s idea of multipolarity, and the much
greater emphasis than before on Russia’s unique path. The statement in the
Crimean speech about the desire of the “Russian world, historical Russia to
restore unity” demonstrated not just a protective, but also the expansionist
character of the ideological narrative of Putinism.81
Second, the official ideology promotes the consolidation and retention of
a supermajority which makes up the core of the people and whose will is
expressed in the policies of the state. In other words, the tendency in Putinism is
for the ideological narrative to be subordinate to identity politics, aiming to
provide “national unity” and loyalty to the authoritarian regime in a multi-ethnic
society that lacks any ideological framework legitimizing the coexistence of
heterogeneous ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and confessional groups. Putin applies
ideology to construct the very “spiritual unity of the people” which, along with
political and economic stability, is the most important factor in the development
of Russian society.

81 Address by President of the Russian Federation, March 18, 2014, President of Russia,
accessed December 19, 2019, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/20603.

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