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

ISBN-13: 9783030205812 / Angielski / Miękka / 2020 / 248 str.

Kate C. Langdon; Vladimir Tismaneanu

Recenzje

"Sameness and difference also emerge when we compare these (or any) two books. Thus, both offer thought-provoking responses to the dilemmas outlined. ... Putin's Totalitarian Democracy (PTD) is a polemic that breaches scholarly etiquette. Plots against Russia (PAR), via an emphasis on popular culture and discourse, applies theoretical paradigms that originate in the psychoanalytical branch of cultural studies to topics usually covered within political communication, serving as a fine exemplar of the incipient discipline of critical geopolitics." (Stephen Hutchings, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 94 (3), September, 2022)

Spis treści

Chapter 1 Recentering Putinism

Debunking the “Putin Phenomenon” and Recentering Putinism

Challenges to Putinism and the Survival of Historical Trends

Brief Chapter Outline

Chapter 2 The Inheritance of an Autocratic Legacy

The Basis of Tsarist Rule: Absolute Power in Exchange for Border Protection

Leninism Continues the Autocratic Legacy

The Ghost of Autocracy Haunts Modern Russia

Chapter 3 Enter “the Hero”

The Dresden Connection

After the Soviet Fall

Apartment Bombings and the Need for a National Savior

War as a Distracting and Mobilizing Force

Recognizing the Need for the People’s Approval

Shaking the Unshakeable: Crises of the Economy and Legitimacy

Chapter 4 The Intellectual Origins of Putinism

What Is Ideology?

Ideology and Blurring: The Progression into Totalitarianism

Intellectual Origins of Putinism and Beyond

Putin the Opportunist, or Putin the Believer?

Chapter 5 Putinism as a Culture in the Making

The Security Imaginary: A Domestic Tool for Defining the Russian National Identity

Nostalgia for the Soviet Paradise

A One-Sided State of Perpetual War

Russia as a Victim

Rewriting History Around Russian Exceptionalism

Russia as the Superior Culture

Biopolitics and Racism: Self-Other Distinctions and Identity

Putinism and the Specter of Homo Sovieticus 

Chapter 6 Russian Nationalism in Education, the Media, and Religion

Ideology and Youth Education in Russia

Ideology and the Media in Russia

Ideology and Religion in Russia

How Individuals Reproduce the Kremlin’s Ideology

Chapter 7 Russian Foreign Policy: Freedom for Whom, to Do What?

Putin’s Foreign Policy, the “Near Abroad,” and Beyond

The Case of Ukraine and Expanding Biopolitics

The Case of Syria and Exaggerating Russia’s Role in Global Anti-Terrorism

Foreign Policy and the Internal Policing of the Enemy

Chapter 8 The New Dark Times  

O autorze

Kate C. Langdon is an Erasmus Mundus scholar. She studied at Vassar College in New York and Charles University in Prague.

Vladimir Tismaneanu is Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, USA.

Blurb

This book studies the cultural, societal, and ideological factors absent from popular discourse on Vladimir Putin’s Russia, contesting the misleading mainstream assumption that Putin is the all-powerful sovereign of Russia. In carefully examining the ideological underpinnings of Putinism—its tsarist and Soviet elements, its intellectual origins, its culturally reproductive nature, and its imperialist foreign policy—the authors reveal that an indoctrinating ideology and a willing population are simultaneously the most crucial yet overlooked keys to analyzing Putin’s totalitarian democracy. Because Putinism is part of a global wave of extreme political movements, the book also reaffirms the need to understand—but not accept—how and why nation-states and masses turn to nationalism, authoritarianism, or totalitarianism in modern times.

Kate C. Langdon is an Erasmus Mundus scholar. She studied at Vassar College in New York and Charles University in Prague.

Vladimir Tismaneanu is Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, USA.