141. ANALYSIS: Marlene Laruelle on the ideology of Russia’s regime, connection to far-right movements in Europe and why Putin’s maintains popularity in Russia
23:34 Share

Welcome to the War in Ukraine update from Kyiv podcast. I'm Jessica Gnauer, a senior lecturer in international relations at Flinders University in Australia, and I'm talking today with Marlene Laruelle. Marlene is a research professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Marlene focuses in her work on the rise of populist and illiberal movements in Russia as

as well as in post-Soviet Eurasia, Europe and the United States. Marlene has published several books on these issues, including Memory Politics and Russia's Civil War, and most recently, Is Russia Fascist?,

So thanks for joining me on the podcast today, Marlene. Well, thank you for the invitation. So since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there's been a lot of focus on the stability of Poland.

Putin's regime and whether or not that regime might actually collapse as a result of the pressures flowing from the full-scale invasion, whether Russia itself might even break apart or descend into civil conflict.

So I'd like to focus a little bit on the characteristics of Putin's regime. How would you describe Putin's ideology or the key drivers of Putin's regime? Well, I think first, ideology is only one of the drivers of Putin's regime, right? I think the regimes rely on different people.

One of them is material or economic, right? Which is like promising, at least on paper, but for a very long time for real, redistributing prosperity, right?

to the Russian population. So that's one pillar. The second one is indeed the ideological one, kind of creating the consensus that is shared enough by the population that is kind of guaranteeing the security of the regime. And then there is a repressive pillar, which I don't think was so important until recently. And I even think that even today, in the context that we know, the repressive pillar is still the minor one compared to others.

So if we focus more on the ideological pillar, we have a lot of contradictory analysis of it, right? Some people say, oh, there is no ideology. It's all kind of, you know, fake, cynical propaganda to brainwash Russian citizens, but Russian elites don't share it. And you have another school that will say exactly the contrary.

Right. It's all about ideology. We can explain every Putin's decision by ideology. And I think it's very much depend on the definition you want to give of ideology. If it's ideology as a kind of a set of value, belief, vision of the world, it's one thing. If it's ideology as kind of very concrete doctrinal ideas.

it's another interpretation. So my analysis is that I think we can say that the Russian regime has an ideology in the sense of a kind of collective language that is shared with the majority of the population and that is making sense for a large part of the population. But that ideology is comprised of several eclectic components.

And so the big kind of pillar, the kind of set of values and beliefs that are largely shared, I think, both by the elite and by the grassroots is more or less. So Russia can't collapse a second time like the Soviet Union did in 1991. It wouldn't survive a second collapse.

Russia should be a great power because it needs to protect itself from the Western normative pressure. And third, the Russian society should support the state because the state embodies the nation and is more important than individual rights. I think that is largely it has been a stable ideological kind of background of the regime. And then above that, you have a lot of different

element or component we could call kind of meta-narrative that have been developing, evolving, depending on, you know, the strategic needs. So that's where we have the eclecticism and the opportunism. And so what we have now in the war context is this idea that the collective waste, so that's in itself already a notion, very heavily loaded,

The collective West is geopolitically and economically in decline, and therefore it's becoming aggressive. It's morally decadent and it's Russophobic by tradition. So that's really the line that is pushed now by the regime narratives and the state media. Another of these meta-narratives is that the Russian society, the healthy society in terms of patriotism, traditional values,

And the war is paradoxically helping to clean the nation from all the liberal, pro-Western, unpatriotic, decadent elements. So the war is kind of creating more homogeneity for the society. And that's a good thing. I think also it's one of the narratives that we have. And the third one,

is like that Russia is de-Europeanized or in the process of de-Europeanization because mostly of the sanction, but because of Russia's own strategy of separating itself from Western and Europe. But that's OK, because the whole world is in a process of de-Westernization. And then Russia can present itself as one of these global leaders of an

anti-colonial, anti-imperial kind of coalition of the global South country against the hegemonic West. So I think it's a pretty well articulated. Of course, if you look at all the details, it looks very eclectic and contradictory. But I think the global vision is relatively clear.

well coordinated and makes sense in the war context and speaks to at least part of the population, of course, not to all of them, but at least speak to part of the citizens. Yeah. And that brings me to something else that we've seen since Russia's full-scale invasion, which is that despite all of the pressures and costs that have been associated with that within the Russian domestic context,

There still seems to be widespread support amongst the population, as far as we can tell, for Putin's regime, possibly also for, you know, what Russia calls its special military operation in Ukraine. How do you explain the fact that Putin's regime does seem to continue to be functioning and continues to maintain that kind of momentum?

widespread support amongst the population? I would bring a nuance in the sense that I think we should dissociate support for the regime and support for the special military operation, right? And we see that in surveys. And of course, we can discuss the value of surveys in an authoritarian war context and so on. But I think we capture pretty well that

Support for Putin is still relatively high, and I will discuss that in a moment. Support for the war is there, but you can feel that, you know, if the regime was suddenly saying we are in a ceasefire and it's peace, the majority of the population will be also fine with the peace aspect. So I wouldn't say they are pro-war. They are just delegating the decision to their leader.

Right. And I think there are several elements to explain that kind of situation. The global one, the one that is very often said is like the Russian society is very depoliticized, atomized.

which makes sense, but it's also an easy answer. I think we have to accept that it's more complex than that and that the language that the regime produces makes sense for a large part of the population. And so one of the key elements, I think, is that it's very difficult to imagine any alternative to the Putin regime. That's what this regime has been able to build, is that the incapacity, inability to imagine another future and imagine a Russia that would work well, where people would live well,

that would be globalized, but that wouldn't be Putin's Russia. There is almost no historical model that people can refer or project. There is no alternative narrative that makes sense. So I think it plays a role in perpetuating the inertia of the regime as the only kind of solution. Then there is, as I mentioned, the depolitization or the idea that it's the job of the regime to know what to do in foreign policy affair. And it's our job as citizens just to trust the regime, to delegate that and to hope for the best.

which I think is where we have the ambiguities of interpreting that support for the regime as being support for the war or support for peace the day the regime will decide to move the narrative. And then something that put me back in the first element I was mentioning about one of the pillars of the regime being also redistributing prosperity, is that the regime has been pretty good since the beginning of the war at protecting the population from the war.

protecting it from the sanctions. And so life continues in Russia. And I know it's always difficult when we are in the West and of course for Ukrainians to imagine that on the Russian side, if you are not in a border region with Ukraine, life is pretty normal. Business is normal, almost. I mean, everybody feels like the tensions, more repression, the private sector is of course in difficulties, but the population has been kind of largely protected.

And that also helped the regime continuing to gather support. And then we have the whole part of the population that is in fact benefiting from the war. And here also, I think it's something that is difficult for us to accept and reflect on that both materially and symbolically,

a part of rural, provincial Russia, really the Russia that got lost these last 30 years, for whom it has been very difficult to go through all the transformation, in a sense, they are getting a kind of revenge. Of course, it's a revenge, which means you can be sent to the front and die or get wounded.

But it also means that the salaries that Russian soldiers are getting is really very high for rural population. If you get wounded, if you are dead, then your family will receive really good sum of money. So you have the financial aspect. And then you have the prestige aspect.

For example, if you get the status of veteran of the war, your children will have free access to university. Your family will have the prestige of being a veteran family. There are a lot of mini social elements that will improve the quality of life and the prospect of the family. And we may joke about that and think, well, that really was going to die. But I think for a lot of men from rural regions with very limited kind of professional perspective,

it's meaningful. It's also where, you know, I think there is a very strong masculinity aspect in understanding the war. It's a way for a war generation of men to find a kind of meaning and reaffirm a kind of masculinity aspect. So I think these elements need also to be factored. Of course, you have also a lot of Russian men who want to avoid going to war, but I think they are part of the population for whom, well, you know, it's part of the job of a man and a good patriot to be called on duty and we shouldn't avoid that. And so,

We really see at the grassroots level this narrative that is, of course, amplified by the state propaganda. But I think it's genuine grassroots about like, you know, all those who left, that's the elites, the westernized. They are traitors. They can't afford to live abroad. We are the ones staying at home and kind of suffering with the homeland and staying even in difficult times. And I think we have to capture this kind of resilience.

and this kind of survival aspect of the Russian society to understand that for a large part of these low middle classes and pauperized part of the population, the war is totally acceptable, including in the human cost he may have. And then you have the repression aspect. But as I said, I think the repression is really a

Still a minor element of that. The repression is very targeted against the kind of upper classes, the intellectual, you know, the elites, the cultural elites, those who speak publicly against the war. But for the average citizen and for the students also are very much targeted. But if you are an average citizen, you don't really feel the repression at a scale that we would imagine.

So, I mean, recently there's been speculations about Putin's health, speculations regarding whether is Putin really in control politically in terms of how the regime is functioning. Would you say that Putin's regime is in fact more stable and more resilient than we might expect? I would say that in the current condition, the regime is pretty stable. The regime was able to absorb the

the shock of the war, the kind of panic moment among the elites, among part of the population, and to kind of go back to normal. I think we need to also realize that it's a regime that is always improvising.

So improvisation may seem as a sign of weakness, and we saw it during, for example, the Prigozhin mutinery, interpreting that as a sign of weakness, but it's also the way the regime kind of find a new equilibrium and balance between the different groups. And at the end, it kind of adapts, right? So it had this kind of ad hoc capacity to adapt to the new environment. And I think they have

been doing that, dealing with the sanction pretty well. So economically, it's not great, but it's also not going as bad as the West was hoping for. The society is protected. The elite seems to be kind of stable. Doesn't mean they are happy. Just mean that they cannot envision another alternative than the one they have.

And so I think the regime and in terms of, you know, the battlefield hasn't been great, but it hasn't been catastrophic neither since the last few months. They can stand their defense. The military industrial complex is functioning 24-7. They are hiring a lot of people, producing a lot. So I think they feel like they have time on their side. Mm.

And something else that you've looked at in your research, which focuses on these kind of far-right nationalist movements that have illiberal tendencies, you've looked at the composition and rise of those types of movements within the European context as well, and then the relationship between

between some of those movements and elements within Russia. Could you say a little bit more about those movements, but then also the relationship between some of those movements and Russia itself?

Yeah, the relationship is a pretty complex one because it's both a strategic relationship and a real ideological kind of affinity. And so here also we need to be able to disentangle what is the strategic aspect and what is the real kind of ideological connection. I think both the European far right and Russia were in a strategic partnership before the war.

because they needed partners, right? But if they could have had better partners, they would probably have been fine. I mean, clearly Russia was interested in getting, you know, European mainstream parties on its side and it had to side with the far right often because it kind of lost a connection and support with the mainstream parties. So that's the kind of strategic aspect of Russia giving support and

becoming friends with whoever still wants to be friends with Russia. But then you have the real kind of ideological connection, a kind of common worldview that is so anti-EU agenda, anti-NATO, so global anti-transatlantic vision of the continental Europe and its destiny to be close to Russia. Of course, conservative values against LGBT rights and kind of multiculturalism, the idea that liberalism is dead.

The revalorization of sovereignty as a key notion, the nation as a sovereign entity, protectionism, both cultural and economic, and a very culturalist, if not primordialist definition of the nation, which is not open to external people or migrants. So I think they were genuine ideological kind of shared elements.

With the war now, of course, it has become very difficult for, let's say, the part of the European far right that is really electorally active, where people are leader, are kind of go to vote and need to secure support. They had to adapt to their own public opinion. And of course, they had to really slow down on their pro-Russian statement. We have seen that in France with Marine Le Pen, even in Italy with Salvini. And so you can see that here there are some nuances where now they try to

avoid any too open pro-Russian statements. And the way they frame it is that they are not saying anything too pro-Russian, but they are saying less support for Ukraine, right? So the way it is framed, it's more kind of isolationist narrative that we cannot afford to support Ukraine anymore. It's too costly. The sanctions are kind of penalizing our own economy, our own citizens. So that's the way they have been able to kind of reframe that.

I think it's genuine that they have adapted to their public opinion. I also think that the day they will be able to become more vocally pro-Russian, they will become it again because the connections are there. And then you have a really radical far right, the one that doesn't care about electorate and voting and so on. This one can continue to be pro-Russian because it doesn't matter for them to be in disagreement with their political

their public opinion. And of course, that works mostly for Western Europe. In Central Europe, it's more complicated, depending if you have illiberal regimes that are pro-Russian or anti-Russian. Poland was a good example of, until recently, of an illiberal government that was sharing a lot of ideological elements with Russia, but that was geopolitically super anti-Russian.

Hungary is the other example where you have an illiberal government that is a relatively pro-Russian one. That's what we have in Slovakia. Now Serbia is another example. So you can see that the war has impacted really that landscape and the relationship has to be recalculated by both sides, depending on the public opinion and how much it matters for these illiberal leaders to

to listen to their public opinion and be more careful in their pro-Russian statement. And the US is another in itself world in its relationship to Russia because of the kind of polarizing role of Trump and the MAGA movement and the Christian right, which is still partly vocally pro-Russian in some of its elements and at the same time try to be also like quieter on some of these elements and depending how things will evolve here because we are entering in

an electoral, a campaigning moment, that will also have a big impact on how all each of these actors will have to position themselves toward Russia. Yeah, that's fascinating. And I wonder if you wanted to say a few more words about the United States. You know, we've seen broadly in the United States, both Republican and Democrats coming out against Russia's invasion. But then, as you mentioned, there are some elements that will feel some more sort of sympathy towards Russia's position.

So could you briefly characterize how you see those elements and what we might see from them going into 2024? Yeah, I think he also, it's a question of the radical core and the less radical periphery, right? The radical core of the MAGA movement can be very pro-Russian. They are not afraid of, you know, the political cost

of saying that it's very much connected to the Christian right, to this idea that Russia is still the kind of the savior of Christian values, of a kind of white civilization. So you still have these elements that play a role. And Ukraine, on the contrary, is seen as really decadent, pro-liberal, pro-Western client of the liberal America. So that core

kind of MAGA groups is more or less, I mean, there are some divergent voices, but kind of for that. And then among the rest of the Republican Party, those who are not the core MAGA group, it's more nuanced.

because also they have to take care of their constituencies who will vote. And they also are more sensitive to real politics, if I may say, on how you vote at the Congress and so on. And that's, I think, what we have seen is that a lot of Republicans coming up with a narrative that is not a pro-Russian one, but that is like, let's stop or let's slow down the assistance to Ukraine. Let's be sure the money is well spent. Maybe we should spend less because we need money for ourselves, which is a very classic isolationist

feature of US politics. So in a sense, it has nothing to do with the conflict. It's just a very American tradition. And then things that are more specifically related to the conflict that are, well, we are not sure Ukraine is really spending well the money. There is heavy corruption in Ukraine that we don't discuss. So we are not sure our money is well used. So here you can see also the core can afford to be very pro-Russian and the kind of less radical, right, can

come with narratives that are more subtle and that are more about like slowing down assistance to Ukraine, but not openly sharing the Russian version of the war. What do you think we might see? We're now heading into the third year since Russia's full-scale invasion. What do you think we might be likely to see in the war itself in 2024?

Well, I think we will see new counter-offensive from the Ukrainian side, for sure. They will be preparing that. And maybe from the Russian side, because Russia seems to have enough men and equipment to be able to try a new offensive on their side, probably with the hope to get what remains of the Donbass region that they would like to have conquered in the beginning of the war. I'm not sure.

Any side will be able to gain a lot. But I think there will be an attempt on both sides to try to move the battle front.

I think the fatigue in Europe toward the war will be more visible, not in the sense of not supporting Ukraine, but of the cost of supporting Ukraine, the cost for European economies, for European citizens. I mean, Europe is a democratic region, so electorates can influence the way decisions, the kind of the capacity of the society to pay for certain activities.

Costs of supporting the war, I think, will have an influence and we will see a growing number of narratives coming from European political leadership, depending per country also, right? I think there will still be a very core support of Ukraine in Central Europe and in Western Europe. It will be less visible. France, Germany, Italy, Spain will be more, kind of, more nuanced on the costs that they can afford to support Ukraine. There will be election in Russia in March. There may be election in Ukraine in

Also, there will be election in the US, so a lot of electoral sequences to come where the war will be integrated into domestic politics and instrumentalized. So here also difficult to see. And maybe growing calls, I think, from ceasefire may be done, you know, on the side in the kind of para diplomacy and also political.

maybe a changing narrative about, you know, what if we stop talking about the war and we begin talking about reconstruction of Ukraine and the condition for the reconstruction? And if you shift that narrative toward the reconstruction, of course, it would be a difficult narrative to come in Ukraine. But we also don't know how much, you know, the Ukrainian population can still bear. And you can also imagine that at least part of the Ukrainian population would like to be able to project themselves into a reconstruction moment, including, you

even if it includes a kind of ceasefire and kind of, you know, freezing of the line in a way that will not be satisfying for Ukrainians, of course. Well, thanks, Marlene. This has been a really wide-ranging and insightful discussion, and I've found it very interesting. I appreciate you joining me on the podcast today. Well, thank you again. Thanks for listening, and thanks to Gonka Varoel for our theme music.